Note values and rests

A note written on the staff answers two questions at once. Where it sits, on a line or in a space, says which sound it is. Its shape says how long that sound lasts. Listen to these notes: it is always the same G, and only the shape changes.

Hear the passage

The first lasts a good while; each of the others lasts half as long as the one before. These shapes are called note values, and they are the subject of this topic. Silence has shapes of its own too, the rests, which come right after.

The seven note values

Music today uses seven note values. From longest to shortest:

Hear the passage

Note value	Head	Stem	Flags
whole note	hollow	no	0
half note	hollow	yes	0
quarter note	filled	yes	0
eighth note	filled	yes	1
sixteenth note	filled	yes	2
thirty-second note	filled	yes	3
sixty-fourth note	filled	yes	4

Notice how the shape keeps gaining parts. The whole note is just a hollow head. The half note gains a stem. The quarter note fills in the head. From there on, each value adds a flag to the end of the stem. Blatter sums up the logic in one sentence: the more components a symbol has, the shorter the duration (Blatter 2007, part 1, art. 3).

In British English the same seven have other names: semibreve, minim, crotchet, quaver, semiquaver, demisemiquaver and hemidemisemiquaver. Portuguese keeps several of the medieval names too: semibreve, mínima, semínima.

Each value is worth two of the next

All seven values follow one proportion: each is worth two of the next. A whole note lasts as long as two half notes, which last as long as four quarter notes.

Hear the passage

Listen: all three measures have the same total length. The rule carries on down the smaller values. A quarter note is worth two eighth notes, which are worth four sixteenth notes:

Hear the passage

Taking the whole note as the unit, the others are fractions of it, which is exactly what their American names say:

Note value	Part of a whole note	How many fit in a whole note
whole note	1	1
half note	1/2	2
quarter note	1/4	4
eighth note	1/8	8
sixteenth note	1/16	16
thirty-second note	1/32	32
sixty-fourth note	1/64	64

Duration is relative

A quarter note does not last a fixed number of seconds. The note value gives only the proportion: that a half note lasts twice as long as a quarter, that an eighth lasts half as long. How long each one actually lasts depends on the speed of the music, the tempo. Med keeps the two apart: note values give relative duration, and tempo gives absolute duration (Med 1996, ch. IV).

That is why the same melody, written with the same note values, can sound calm or restless. The shapes do not change; the clock applied to them does.

The stem can go up or down

The stem of a half note and of every shorter value can point up or down, and that changes nothing in the sound. The direction follows the note's place on the staff, as the staff topic showed: below the third line the stem goes up; above it, down.

Hear the passage

But the flag always sits on the right side of the stem, whether the stem goes up or down. Blatter points out the detail: a flag on a downward stem is "upside-down", yet it is still on the right (Blatter 2007, part 1, art. 3).

When several eighth notes or shorter values come in a row, the flags are usually replaced by a beam joining the stems. The sound is the same; the beam only helps the eye see how the notes group together. The rules for that grouping depend on the meter and have a topic of their own.

Rests

Music is not made of sound alone. Silences have a length too, and it has to be written just as precisely. That is what rests are for. Every note value has a matching rest of the same length, named after it: whole rest, half rest, and so on.

Hear the passage

Rests follow the same proportion as note values: each is worth two of the next. Since silence has no pitch, a rest does not sit on a line or in a space chosen by a note; it takes a fixed place in the middle of the staff.

Lacerda points out that in Portuguese the word for rest, "pausa", has two meanings in music: the silence itself and the sign that stands for it (Lacerda 1966, ch. IV). English has the same double use of "rest".

Whole rest and half rest

The first two rests are the easiest to mix up: both are a small rectangle. The difference is the position. The whole rest hangs below the fourth line; the half rest sits on top of the third (Med 1996, ch. IV).

Hear the passage

One way to remember it: the whole rest is the longest, the "heaviest", so it hangs; the half rest, lighter, rests on the line.

Sound and silence together

In a melody, note values and rests take turns, and their lengths add up in the same way.

Hear the passage

In the first measure, three quarter notes and a quarter rest: four quarter notes' worth of time. In the second, a half note and a half rest: four quarters again. Silence counts as much as sound.

Values you will hardly see

The seven are not the only ones. Above the whole note there is the double whole note, or breve, worth two whole notes; below the sixty-fourth note, the 128th note, with five flags, worth half a sixty-fourth. Lacerda records both and notes that they are used very rarely (Lacerda 1966, ch. IV). Blatter also calls the breve rare, and gives the five-flag note as the limit that is almost never passed in practice.

What comes next

Note values only double or halve. For lengths in between, such as one and a half times a half note, there are the dot and the tie, the subject of extending note values. And to organise note values into regular groups, with a strong beat that keeps coming back, there is the measure.