Forum: music.stackexchange.com
Tags: <notation><rhythm><time-signatures>
Title: In 3/2 time why is a whole-note rest used as a bar's rest when a whole-note doesn't fill the measure?
Question: A bar's duration is measured in beats and can be represented using a whole note. So, a bar duration in beats is just a whole note.  So isn't a 3/2 measure just spilling over? 3 half notes is equal to a bar and a half. What's the explanation?

Answers:
sents: text: A bar's duration can be represented using the whole note No, not always!
text: This is the incorrect assumption you're making.
text: A bar's 'duration' depends on the time signature.
text: So, in a standard 4/4 bar, the bar is 4 quarter notes long.
text: (4 * 1/4...see where this is going?)
text: Alternatively, in a 3/2 bar, the bar is 3 half notes long, or 3 * 1/2!
text: So, whilst a full 4/4 bar would look like this: A full 3/2 bar would look more like this: Or alternatively, could be filled with a single, dotted whole note.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/10938/Chris
score: 18
sents: text: A whole note takes up a full measure in 16/16, 8/8, 4/4, and 2/2 time only.
text: A whole note has the value of 4 quarter notes or 2 half notes.
text: Since how common 4/4 time is (it is even also referred to as common time)
text: it makes sense that the notes name line up with the use in 4/4.
text: In 3/2 the whole measure is represented by a dotted whole note (i.e. a whole note plus a half note) as seen below.
text: There are notes bigger then
text: a whole note for example there is a double whole note that has the value of 8 quarter notes.
text: This note would be used to fill a full measure in 4/2 as shown below.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/7222/Dom
score: 11
sents: text: The US terms whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth note, etc have some obvious advantages over the UK terms: semibreve, minim, crotchet, quaver, semiquaver, etc
text: but they make most sense only in 4/4 time or maybe also 2/2.
text: In 3/4 or 6/8, the whole note is too big for a single measure.
text: In 5/4 and 6/4, it is not big enough.
text: The relative lengths of the notes are still indicated by their names but the "whole" becomes misleading beyond 4/4 and 2/2.
text: As Bob says above, there is a special rule that a whole measure rest may be indicated by a whole note rest but only applies to rests.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/39373/badjohn
score: 5
sents: text: The questioner is mistaken.
text: A whole NOTE cannot be used to fill a bar of any length.
text: But a whole bar can be filled by a REST that looks very like a whole note rest.
text: The whole bar rest and the whole note rest are two different things though.
text: They use the same symbol, but positioned differently.
text: A whole NOTE rest sits at its normal rhythmic position in the bar.
text: (The whole note rest is actually quite rare.
text: The only place you're likely to see one is when a hymnal uses 4/2 time.)
text: The whole BAR rest is centered in the bar.
text: It can fill a bar of any size (with certain exceptions - bars of 3/16 or shorter use the actual length, as do bars of 4/2 or longer).
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/17003/Laurence Payne
score: 3
sents: text: 3/2 is a "simple triple time signature"simple means every beat is made up of 2 beats or each of these beats can be broken into two beats and triple because of containing 3 half notes in a measure, meaning there are 3 half or minim notes in a measure.
text: That means all the notes in each measure must add up to 3 half notes, not more than or less than that.
text: Any combination of notes can be used as long as they add up to 3 half notes, such as; one half note, two quarter notes,two eighth notes and one quarter note rest or so on.
text: In time signatures with 4 as the bottom number, such as 4/4 , 3/4 etc.
text: time, the half note is two beats long.
text: However, when 2 is used as the bottom number a minim is 1 beat long.
text: As we know top number in a time signature says how many beats are to be contained in each bar that is 3 and bottom number the note denomination,which represents one beat that is the minim or half-note.
text: So 3/2 can be interpreted as three minim beats per bar and must be counted as 1 2 3 but will never be counted as 1 (2) 3 (4) 5 (6) because each half note gets 1 beat here.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/41022/Gopen DeSarkar
score: 1
sents: text: Let me guess.
text: A 3/2 beat means ‘3 groups of 2 beats’ and cannot be changed to ‘6/4’ which will become ‘6 groups of a quarter note’.
text: So 3/2 is very different from 6/4 or all kinds of beats and is very rare.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/68818/Momo Super
score: 1
sents: text: The way i see it is in fractions.
text: A whole note (semibreve) is 2/2.
text: A half note (a minim) is 1/2.
text: A quater note (crotchet) is 1/4.
text: An eighth note (quaver) is 1/8.
text: If you are trying to get 3/2, its just a matter of getting three halfs in a bar.
text: so you could have three half notes or one whole not and one half note.
text: Hope this answered your quetion
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/71029/Sophia
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
There is a special rule that a whole measure rest may be indicated by a whole note rest but only applies to rests.
There is a special rule whereby a whole-note rest can be used to denote a whole-bar rest, regardless of the time signature.