Note value

In music notation, a note value is the amount of time of a note. A note value is relative: it depends on the tempo (speed) of the music. For example, a quarter note (crotchet) at 80 BPM is the same as a half note (minimum) at 160 beats per minute.

Note value is shown by the shape of the note, including the notehead, stem, and flags. Simple note values are fractional powers of two, for example: one, one half, one fourth, etc.

A rest means a silence (no sound) of an equal amount of time.

List
NoteRestAmerican nameBritish nameRelative valueDotted valueDouble dotted valueTriple dotted value70px x50px large, duplex long, or maximaWilliam Smythe, Babcock Mathews, and Emil Liebling, "Large", Pronouncing and Defining Dictionary of Music (Cincinnati, New York, London: J. Church and Company, 1896).Theodore Baker, A Dictionary of Musical Terms: Containing Upwards of 9,000 English, French, German, Italian, Latin, and Greek Words and Phrases, third edition, revised and enlarged (New York: G. Schirmer, 1897): 131.(occasionally octuple note,Ray M. Owen "Glossary of Film Terms: Normal v — Noth". SoundsOfNewMexico.com, 2012. 

MC Peko, "bpm calc 2.2 // for calculating and visualizing bpm and related values // help // change-log // open source: zip js ". Focus Studios, 2015. octuple whole note, or octuple entire musical note)Anonymous, "My Ambient Sounds—Sleeping Music & Ambient Soundscape Mixer to Help You Sleep Better Now " (10 February 2016) Main Facts.biz (accessed 18 June 2016).  8      x80px  File:longa rest.svg longMusic Dictionary (Do–Dq) Dolmetsch.com (accessed 4 February 2015).William Smythe, Babcock Mathews, and Emil Liebling, "Double Note", Pronouncing and Defining Dictionary of Music (Cincinnati, New York, London: J. Church and Company, 1896). or longaJohn Morehen and Richard Rastall, "Note values"", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).(occasionally quadruple noteJohn Freckleton Burrowes, Burrowes' Piano-forte Primer: Containing the Rudiments of Music Adapted for Either Private Tuition Or Teaching in Classes Together with a Guide to Practice, new edition, revised and modernized, with important additions,m by L.H. Southard (Boston and New York: Oliver Ditson, 1874): 41. Hendrik Van der Werf,.. The Oldest Extant Part Music and the Origin of Western Polyphony, 2 vols (Rochester, New York: H. van der Werf, 1993:. 1:97. or quadruple whole note)  4      File:breve.gif  File:breve rest.svg  double whole note,John Morehen and Richard Rastall, "Breve" and "Note values", New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition (2001). double note"Double Note", Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (C. & G. Merriam Co., 1913)."Music Dictionary (Do–Dq)" Dolmetsch.com (accessed 4 February 2015).Lowell Mason, Manual of the Boston Academy of Music (Boston, 1843): 67.  breve  2      x70px  x70px  whole note  semibreve  1      x70px  x70px  half note  minim        x70px  x24px or x16px quarter note  crotchet        x70px  x30px  eighth note  quaver        x70px  x50px  sixteenth note  semiquaver        x70px  x70px  thirty-second note  demisemiquaver        x70px  x70px  sixty-fourth note  hemidemisemiquaver        x70px  x70px  hundred twenty-eighth note  semihemidemisemiquaver(p. 112) (rare)        x70px  x70px  two hundred fifty-sixth note  demisemihemidemisemiquaverKartik Asooja, Sindhu Kiranmai, and Paul Buitelaar "UNLP at the C@merata Task: Question Answering on Musical Scores ACM " (rare)        

Shorter notes can be created theoretically ad infinitum by adding further flags, but are very rare.

Variations
Sometimes the longa or breve is used to show a very long note of indefinite amount of time, as at the end of a piece (e.g. at the end of Mozart's Mass KV 192).

A single eighth note, or any faster note, is always stemmed with flags, while two or more are usually beamed in groups.Gerou, Tom (1996). Essential Dictionary of Music Notation, p.211. Alfred.  When a stem is present, it can go either up (from the right side of the note head) or down (from the left side), except in the cases of the longa or maxima which are nearly always written with downward stems. In most cases, the stem goes down if the notehead is on the center line or above, and up otherwise. Any flags always go to the right of the stem.

Modifiers
A note value may be made longer by adding a dot after it. This dot adds the next briefer note value, making it one and a half times its original length of time. A number of dots (n) lengthen the note value by  its value, so two dots add two lower note values, making a total of one and three quarters times its original length of time. The rare three dots make it one and seven eighths the length of time, and so on.

Two notes of the same pitch can be combined into one note with a tie.

To divide a note value to three equal parts, or some other value than two, tuplets may be used. For example, an eighth note triplet has three notes in the space of two eighth notes, so each note has a length of 1/12. An sixteenth note quintuplet has five notes in the space of four sixteenth notes, so each note has a length of 1/20.

References

Category:Note values