I have had an unfortunate experience with my first grade theory students’ recent exam results. It’s the first time that their being so intelligent has proven to be a disadvantage!
During our learning of rests in 3/4 time, my class kept asking why minim rests were not allowed. Even though “never use minim rests in 3/4 time” is my mantra in How to Blitz! Grade 1 Theory (and Musicanship), my personal belief is that a minim rest IS allowed on beats 1 and 2 but not on beats 2 and 3. The reason for this is that it is ok to group crotchet beats into a minim rest if the FIRST crotchet beat is a strong beat.
This then translates to the understanding of grouping of rests in 6/8 time in second grade. It is ok to group two quaver rests together if the FIRST quaver beat is a strong or a medium beat.
Since my students were hounding me about ‘why’, I decided to give them this more generic rule, which also explains why they often come across minim rests in 3/4 time in their general repertoire. I did explain to them at the time that it may not be advisable to do this in their exam... that it’s ‘safer’ to simply avoid minim rests, but that it’s not actually wrong to write the minim rest.
However, five of the 10 students in the class decided they liked the more generic definition and wrote a minim rest to complete the bar ending in a single crotchet note. They were marked wrong and each lost two marks.
I contacted the AMEB to enquire about their reasoning for this. They referred me to Gardner Read:
‘A good resource for teachers is "Music Notation" by Gardner-Read [published by Taplinger]. He states that "..although the minim rest is equal to two crotchet rests, it cannot always substitute for them". The author then goes on to explain that it is correct to write, in 3/4 time, 2 crotchet rests followed by a crotchet, but not a minim rest followed by a crotchet; a crotchet followed by 2 crotchet rests is correct, but not a crotchet followed by a minim rest. "In other words, the minim rest should be used to express two crotchet-note values only when the measure is capable of being divided into two equal halves.". So the principle is one of beat division.’
So it seems that although it is a common perception amongst teachers that the ‘safe’ route is only to protect students from accidentally writing a minim rest on beats 2 and 3, according to Gardner-Read there really is no place for a minim rest in ¾ time. Since the AMEB has decided to align its marking guidelines with this text, as teachers of AMEB courses we should all adjust our teaching accordingly.