Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Large (Latin: Maxima) / Octuple whole note [3] Long / Quadruple whole note [3] Breve / Double whole note: Semibreve / Whole note: Minim / Half note: Crotchet / Quarter note [4] [5] Quaver / Eighth note For notes of this length and shorter, the note has the same number of flags (or hooks) as the rest has branches. Semiquaver / Sixteenth note
In music, a half note (American) or minim (British) is a note played for half the duration of a whole note (or semibreve) and twice the duration of a quarter note (or crotchet). It was given its Latin name (minima, meaning "least or smallest") because it was the shortest of the five note values used in early medieval music notation. [1]
This dot adds the next briefer note value, making it one and a half times its original duration. A number of dots ( n ) lengthen the note value by 2 n − 1 / 2 n its value, so two dots add two lower note values, making a total of one and three quarters times its original duration.
The duration (note length or note value) is indicated by the form of the note-head or with the addition of a note-stem plus beams or flags. A stemless hollow oval is a whole note or semibreve, a hollow rectangle or stemless hollow oval with one or two vertical lines on both sides is a double whole note or breve.
The system of note types used in mensural notation closely corresponds to the modern system. The mensural brevis is nominally the ancestor of the modern double whole note (breve); likewise, the semibrevis corresponds to the whole note (semibreve), the minima to the half note (minim), the semiminima to the quarter note (crotchet), and the fusa to the eighth note (quaver).
5 is written as a normal quarter note, four quarter notes complete the bar, but the whole bar lasts only 4 ⁄ 5 of a reference whole note, and a beat 1 ⁄ 5 of one (or 4 ⁄ 5 of a normal quarter note). This is notated in exactly the same way that one would write if one were writing the first four quarter notes of five quintuplet quarter notes.
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.
Quarter tone on C. A quarter tone is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale or an interval about half as wide (orally, or logarithmically) as a semitone, which itself is half a whole tone. Quarter tones divide the octave by 50 cents each, and have 24 different pitches.