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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 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 (see Figure 1). 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.
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).
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.
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Dotted notes and their equivalent durations. The curved lines, called ties, add the note values together. In Western musical notation, a dotted note is a note with a small dot written after it. [a] In modern practice, the first dot increases the duration of the basic note by half (the original note with an extra beam) of its original value.