those rests can mean something

The rest is a potent creative factor.
--Vincent Persichetti, Twentieth-Century Harmony

This post is particularly aimed at classical guitarists, but it does apply across the board more or less. Sometimes when confronted with rests in music it's debatable as to whether they're really to "played" (if you will) or not. I have one test that can help determine this: if you encounter a rest where it would've been easier for the composer to have not written rests and instead have written a longer note value then the rest should be observed. If you write music you'll know that this is the case. It takes extra effort to pen (or to click) in a rest. For a clear example that all of us probably know consider Sor's Study Op.30 no.20.


Also consider the 10th measure of Sor's Divertimento op.1 no.1.


Here it would've been so much easier simply to write a dotted quarter note, so it's a pretty safe conjecture that those rests really need to be there (i.e. that low G needs to get cut-off on beat 2 -- and yes, it should be a G, not an E: this sort of misprint is common, and you'll get used to it when you read from facsimiles).

The opposite can be true, too, of course. More on that in a later post...