Understanding The Written Musical Notation

The fingerpicking exercise on this video is in 4/4 time. That means that each quarter note gets one beat and there are four beats in a measure. Since we are playing eight notes in each measure it means that each note is actually one half of the beat. Take a look at the written out diagram below to understand better what I mean.

In the video I count: one and two and three and four and. Each of the numbers indicates one note and every time I say “and” I’m indicating one note also. This is a common way of talking out eight notes.  

Resources:

If musical notation is new to you it would help to watch my video Understanding Musical Symbols.