Talk:Note value

message: Attention Wahoofive!  In our quest to make time signatures more accessible, I feel the following sentence needs be added to the note value article:
"Note values appear as the bottom figure in time signatures, where they indicate the beat unit of a musical work."
I am not sure whether this should appear right up at the top, just after the line about the rest. (It probably should, because it's  important -)  
....OR whether it should be inserted just before the History section, with a new heading:  "The Role of Note Values in Time Signatures" - in which case I would preface the proposed sentence with the word "Unmodified".
Please indicate your preference ASAP and I will execute this pronto.  FClef 8 September 2005 23:59 (GMT)
:I wouldn't be in a hurry to do this. This article as it stands is about the various note symbols. While obvious there's a sort of Platonic meaning of "note value" separate from the symbols used to represent them, it won't be easy to graft this concept into this article without some more thought. —Wahoofive (talk) 23:48, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The role of Note Values in Time Signatures 

message: The article claims that
:The earliest use of the hundred-twenty-eighth note is in the first movement of Beethoven's Sonata "Pathetique" Op. 13.
A source, please? EldKatt (Talk) 16:32, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is one of those things that would be nice to add to the 128th note article if a source could be found. Note that 256th notes already appear in Vivaldi and Couperin, so one would probably have to look before that. Double sharp (talk) 07:15, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source for earliest 128th note 

message: Something is missing here. An ill-defined rest between notes must be assumed; else consecutive notes will run together.
Nowhere is this even mentioned. In the absense of notation to say otherwise, what is one to assume about this spacing? For example, might one just chop 10% off the value of a note? Is the spacing between whole notes any different from the spacing between eigth notes? Perhaps one should chop off a 1/256 note in all cases?
Then of course there is the matter of staccato and similar. Just how much time gets chopped off of the note?
Which part of the note gets chopped? The beginning, the end, or a bit of both?
24.110.145.202 21:54, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The precise duration of this rest (always at the end) varies greatly. Staccatissimo notes may well be chopped to 25% or less of their written length. (There's of course the beginner's guidelines of staccatissimo = 25%, staccato = 50%, and portato = 75%.) On the other hand, legatissimo notes on the piano may even have a "negative rest", overlapping into the next note. Legato notes indeed run together and are not meant to have an audible rest between them. In the absence of notation, nonlegato should probably be assumed, implying a cut-off of something like 90% (obviously separate, but not detached). Double sharp (talk) 07:14, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  does not work 

message: The article says that "A note value does not stand for any absolute duration, but can only be understood in relation to other note values." So, if it's not absolute duration that determines whether a given note is, say, a crotchet or a quaver, then what is it? Is it that what are perceived to be the "main beats" of the music are always crotchets, whatever their duration? Or is it a combination of this and a sort of ball-park convention about how long crotchets should be? For example, if the main beats of a piece were two seconds apart then would a crotchet be two seconds? Or would that be thought to be "too long", so that the main beats actually became minims? This question is tied up with the notion of time signatures, but that article doesn't seem to explain it either. For example, what would cause me to write a piece in 4/2 rather than 4/4? If not the absolute duration of notes then what? If anyone could explain these issues (in the article(s)) then that would be great. 86.150.100.14 (talk) 20:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The assignment of value to duration is pretty arbitrary. In the Middle Ages they started with two note values, which they called "long" (longa) and "short" (breve). Through a process you might call "note value inflation", the breve gradually through the centuries came to become a very long note (twice the length of a whole note). Even from the same composer there can be variations of some 1000% (that's a thousand) in the length of a particular note value -- a Mozart slow movement might have slowly-pulsing eighth notes after the first movement had had lickety-split quarters. The reason no rule is cited in the article is that there is no rule. It's like "loud" and "soft". A birdsong might seem deafening if it's waking you up in the morning, but right after you get off a plane the same birdsong might seem almost inaudible. —Wahoofive (talk) 00:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Duration of notes 

message: The SVG versions of the note value pictures have several typographical mistakes. I reverted to the original high quality GIF pictures (See revision 137583316) pending improvements to the SVG images.--Dbolton (talk) 22:05, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Note pictures

message: Is a note value ever defined in terms of how many beats it gets? As a music teacher and music software author, I have defined a quarter note as getting one beat, in the context of the typical time signature of 4/4. The 'numerator' says there are 4 beats to the measure, and the 'denominator' says a quarter note ("4" meaning "1/4" or one fourth) gets one beat. 
If so, I'd like to add at the top of the article the idea that a "whole note" gets 4 beats, a "half note" gets 2 beats, and a "quarter note" gets 1 beat. Is this okay?
If it's okay, do I need to provide any sources, or is this common knowledge? If it's not okay, why not? --Uncle Ed (talk) 13:11, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The trouble with this is it's not always true. In 6/8 time a quarter note is only two-thirds of a beat. --Dbolton (talk) 18:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have a source for that? I've been teaching my students that in 6/8 time there are 6 beats, and that a 1/8 note gets one beat. --Uncle Ed (talk) 23:48, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If you count 6/8 time in six beats per measure then each quarter note gets two beats. 6/8 time can also be counted as two beats per measure for convenience. Here's a source: Reviewing 6/8 time. --Dbolton (talk) 17:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Beats and notes

message: It's inconsistent that the thirty-second and sixty-fourth note sizes in this table are bigger than the others. Please fix this if possible. Georgia guy (talk) 17:07, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Note sizes 

message: While I can't claim to be an expert of old kinds of musical notation it is my impression that some errors may have occured, for example regarding the dotted, double dotted and triple dotted values. In Philippe de Vitry's "Ars nova" as mentioned in the article there are not only black notes but white notes as well. A "Maxima" can have a ratio of 3 : 1 or of 2 : 1 in comparison with a "Longa". This ratio is called "tempus". The same goes for the ratio of a "Longa" in comparison with a "Brevis". In this case the ratio is called "prolatio". A ratio of 3 : 1 is called "perfect" and a ratio of 2 : 1 "imperfect". So there are 4 cases: "tempus perfectum" with "prolatio perfectum", "tempus perfectum" with "prolatio imperfectum", "tempus imperfectum" with "prolatio perfectum" and "tempus imperfectum" with "prolatio imperfectum". For the purpose of indicating these 4 cases there are 4 different mensural symbols. Of these symbols mainly the symbol for "tempus imperfectum" with "prolatio imperfectum" has survived in our times, with usual meaning as indicating a meter of 4/4 time. In some cases the "perfect" values were executed as "imperfect" and the rules after which it was done were very complicated. However, a dot was not used for enlarging a value. In fact, there were dots in this old notation but their meaning was totally different.
Double dotted values, as far as I know, came into regular use not earlier than in the second half of the 18th century. While I am not quite sure whether Mozart already used them I can't remember a single example for it and I am quite sure that Joh. Seb Bach did not use them. Besides, the duration of a note with single dot was heavily depending on the tempo, the style and the character of a piece. For example a note with single dot in an Adagio was usually executed as if it was a double dotted note. This is not to say the duration could be derived from a mathematical formula as given in the article. This applies even to notes with single dot. In other words, a dot usually augments a value while the measure of this augmentation is a question of interpretation and style.
What about the difference between British and American names, by the way? An expression like "semihemidemisemiquaver" is hardly speakable. So it would be my guess that British musicians will have adopted the American expressions instead. 79.250.48.48 (talk) 10:45, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right about double dotted notes; according to Harvard Dictionary, "J.J. Quantz...(1752) seems to have been the first to use the double dot", and discusses at length how the dotted value in the Baroque could be more or less than the modern interpretation, depending on context. Even 19th-century composers often used dotted rhythms to mean triplets. The history part of the article could be expanded somewhat, although I'd suggest that details of mensural notation probably belong elsewhere. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:49, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: 79.250 is definitely right that there are major problems with the descriptions of the notes longer than breve as well. I've made substantial changes to the Maxima (music) article and I'd like to remove references to octuple/quadruple whole notes as well, which seems like original research. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 06:22, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: "While I am not quite sure whether Mozart already used them": oh yes, he did. See the opening of the Haffner Symphony, KV 385. (He writes a minim tied to a double-dotted crotchet; now he could have just written a triple-dotted minim, but didn't. Make of that what you will.) Double sharp (talk) 16:08, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some errors? 

message: People who keep adding back quadruple or octuple as American names for the longa and maxima: where's a citation? I've never seen such a term, and it's not given as an alternative term in any music history/notation history text I know of. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 17:45, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The Grove entry for note values, btw. gives no American terms for longa or maxima, which makes sense since they disappeared from use before America came into separate existence.  My suggestion is to use colspan=2 to merge the two fields and mark the commonly used Latin terms as "longa (Latin)" -- they are much more commonly used than the "proper" English terms (double long, large, etc.) Best, -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 15:55, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems to me that there is a question of what is meant by "English usage" here. Common, everyday use among performing musicians may be quite a different thing from usage by historical musicologists, for instance. Further, not only is there the question of nationality, but also of time. Many American sources from the late-19th and early 20th centuries (some of them still in use, many others now quaint antiques) treat as familiar terms the words "large" and "long" for the maxima and longa, for example, even while qualifying these note values as having fallen out of use in modern music. There is also a noticeable shift over the past hundred to a hundred-and-fifty years from relative uniformity between UK and US usage toward more differentiation. The term "breve", for example, is clearly regarded by Baker as the standard American term in 1897, with "double note" as second choice; the redundant term "double whole note" appears to be a somewhat later American coinage. As long as we are on the subject, at the other end of the scale I find a considerable number of sources that would dispute H. L. Mencken's contention in 1921 that, if a British musician were to use such an outlandishly small note as the one Americans would call a 1/128 note, he would not know what to name it. Of course he would. It is either a semihemidemisemiquaver, or a quasihemidemisemiquaver. Now, whether this is a commonly used term depends a lot on whether we mean, "whenever the note actually occurs", or "considering that the subject scarcely ever arises". The same could be said for the large and the longa.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:28, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quadruple, Octuple.