Note values chart: notes and rests

Overview

In music notation, a note value indicates the relative duration of a note, using the texture or shape of the notehead, the presence or absence of a stem, and the presence or absence of flags/beams/hooks/tails. Unmodified note values are fractional powers of two, for example one, one-half, one fourth, etc.

A rest indicates a silence of an equivalent duration.

Origins of the names

The British names go back at least to English renaissance music, and the terms of Latin origin had international currency at that time. Longa means 'long', and many of the rest indicate relative shortness. Breve is from Latin brevis, 'short', minim is from minimus, 'very small', and quaver refers to the quavering effect of very fast notes. The elements semi-, demi- and hemi- mean 'half' in Latin, French and Greek respectively. The chain semantic shift whereby notes which were originally perceived as short came progressively to be long notes is interesting both linguistically and musically. However, the crotchet is named after the shape of the note, from the Old French for a 'little hook', and it is possible to argue that the same is true of the minim, since the word is also used in palaeography to mean a vertical stroke in mediaeval handwriting.

Overview

A whole note (American) or semibreve (British) in musical notation is a single note equivalent to or lasting as long as two half notes or four quarter notes.

Nomenclature

The British term is taken from Italian semibreve, itself built upon Latin semi- "half" and brevis "short." The American whole note is a calque of the German ganze Note. Some languages derive the name of the note from its round shape, such as Catalan rodona, French ronde, and Spanish redonda. The Greek name means "whole". The Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese names mean "whole note".

Description

The whole note or semibreve has a note head in the shape of a hollow oval—like a half note (or minim)—but with no note stem. Since it is equal to four quarter notes, it occupies the entire length of a measure in 4/4 time.

Other notes are multiples or fractions of the whole note. For example, a double whole note (or breve) lasts twice the duration of the whole note, a half note lasts one half the duration, and a quarter note (or crotchet) lasts one quarter the duration.

A related symbol is the whole rest (or semibreve rest), which signifies a rest for the duration of a whole note. Whole rests are drawn as filled-in rectangles generally hanging under the second line from the top of a musical staff, though they may occasionally be put under a different line (or ledger line) in more complicated polyphonic passages, or when two instruments or vocalists are written on one staff.

Less commonly, the whole note may be used to denote a whole measure in music of free rhythm, such as Anglican chant, irrespective of the time of the measure.

Overview

In Western musical notation, a dotted note is a note with a small dot written after it. In modern practice, the dot increases the duration of the original note by half of its value. This makes a dotted note equivalent to the original note tied to a note of half the value – for example, a dotted half note is equivalent to a half note tied to a quarter note. Subsequent dots add progressively halved value, as shown in the example to the right.

The use of dotted notes dates back at least to the 10th century, but the exact amount of lengthening a dot provides in early music contexts may vary. Mensural notation uses a dot of division to clarify ambiguities about its context-dependent interpretation of rhythmic values, sometimes alongside the dot of augmentation as described above. In the gregorian chant editions of Solesmes, a dot is typically interpreted as a doubling of length.

Historical examples of music performance practices using unequal rhythms include notes inégales and swing. The precise performance of dotted rhythms can be a complex issue. Even in notation that employs dots, their performed values may be longer or shorter than the dot mathematically indicates, practices known as over-dotting or under-dotting.

Notation

If dotted note is on a space, the dot is placed in that space. If the note is on a line, the dot is placed in the space above. This principle also applies to notes on ledger lines.

The placement of dots need not follow this convention when space does not allow for it. For example, when dots apply to adjacent notes in a chord or notes in multiple voices.

Any note value can be dotted, as can rests of any value. If the rest is in its normal vertical position near the middle of the staff, dots are placed in the third staff space. Dotted rests are conventional in compound meters but can sometimes be used in simple meters as well.

In Baroque music, dotted notation was sometimes used to indicate triplet rhythms when the context makes it obvious.

Dots have been used across barlines, such as in H. C. Robbins Landon's edition of Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 70 in D major, but this usage is obsolete—a tie across the barline is used instead.

Double dotting

A double-dotted note is a note with two small dots written after it, with a duration of 1 3/4 times its basic note value. Double-dotted notes are much less common than single dotted notes. Typically, as in the example to the right, they are followed by a note whose duration is one-quarter the length of the basic note value, completing the next higher note value. Double dots were not used until the mid-18th century, before which a single dot could sometimes mean a double dot.

In a French overture (and sometimes other Baroque music), notes written as single dotted notes are often interpreted to mean double-dotted notes, and the following note is commensurately shortened.

Overview

A rest is the absence of a sound for a defined period of time in music, or one of the musical notation signs used to indicate that.

The length of a rest corresponds with that of a particular note value, thus indicating how long the silence should last. Each type of rest is named for the note value it corresponds with (e.g. quarter note and quarter rest, or quaver and quaver rest), and each of them has a distinctive sign.

Description

Rests are intervals of silence in pieces of music, marked by symbols indicating the length of the silence. Each rest symbol and name corresponds with a particular note value, indicating how long the silence should last, generally as a multiplier of a measure or whole note.

• The quarter (crotchet) rest (𝄽) may take a different form in older music.
• The four-measure rest or longa rest are only used in long silent passages which are not divided into bars.
• The combination of rests used to mark a silence follows the same rules as for note values.

One-bar rest

When an entire bar is devoid of notes, a whole (semibreve) rest placed at the middle of the measure is used, regardless of the actual time signature. Historically exceptions were made for a 4/2 time signature (four half notes per bar), when a double whole (breve) rest was typically used for a bar's rest, 3/2 or 6/4 time, where a dotted whole rest was used, and for time signatures shorter than 3/16, when a rest of the actual measure length would be used. Some published (usually earlier) music places the numeral "1" above the rest to confirm the extent of the rest.

Therefore, dotted whole rests and dotted rests of longer values are very rarely seen.

Occasionally in manuscripts and facsimiles of them, bars of rest are sometimes left completely empty and unmarked, possibly even without the staves.

Dotted rest

A rest may also have a dot after it, increasing its duration by half, but this is less commonly used than with notes, except occasionally in modern music notated in compound meters such as 6/8 or 12/8. In these meters the long-standing convention has been to indicate one beat of rest as a quarter rest followed by an eighth rest (equivalent to three eighths). See: Anacrusis.

In music notation, a tie is a curved line connecting the heads of two or more notes of the same pitch, indicating that they are to be played as a single note with a duration equal to the sum of the individual notes' values. A tie is similar in appearance to a slur; however, slurs join notes of different pitches which need to be played independently, but seamlessly (legato).

Ties are used for three reasons: (a) when holding a note across a bar line; (b) when holding a note across a beat within a bar, i.e. to allow the beat to be clearly seen; and (c) for unusual note lengths which cannot be expressed in standard notation.

Overview

In music, a tuplet (also irrational rhythm or groupings, artificial division or groupings, abnormal divisions, irregular rhythm, gruppetto, extra-metric groupings, or, rarely, contrametric rhythm) is "any rhythm that involves dividing the beat into a different number of equal subdivisions from that usually permitted by the time-signature (e.g, triplets, duplets, etc.)" This is indicated by a number, or sometimes two indicating the fraction involved. The notes involved are also often grouped with a bracket or (in older notation) a slur.

The most common type of tuplet is the triplet.

Triplet

The most common tuplet is the triplet (German Triole, French triolet, Italian terzina or tripletta, Spanish tresillo). Whereas normally two quarter notes (crotchets) are the same duration as a half note (minim), three triplet quarter notes have that same duration, so the duration of a triplet quarter note is 2/3 the duration of a standard quarter note.

Similarly, three triplet eighth notes (quavers) are equal in duration to one quarter note. If several note values appear under the triplet bracket, they are all affected the same way, reduced to 2/3 their original duration.

The triplet indication may also apply to notes of different values, for example a quarter note followed by one eighth note, in which case the quarter note may be regarded as two triplet eighths tied together.

In some older scores, rhythms like this would be notated as a dotted eighth note and a sixteenth note as a kind of shorthand presumably so that the beaming more clearly shows the beats.