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An eighth note or a quaver is a musical note played for one eighth the duration of a whole note (semibreve). Its length relative to other rhythmic values is as expected—e.g., half the duration of a quarter note (crotchet), one quarter the duration of a half note (minim), and twice the value of a sixteenth note.
The word "crotchet" comes from Old French crochet, meaning 'little hook', diminutive of croc, 'hook', because of the hook used on the note in black notation of the medieval period. As the name implies, a quarter note's duration is one quarter that of a whole note, half the length of a half note, and twice that of an eighth note.
There may be any number of beats in a measure but the most common by far are multiples of 2 or 3 (i.e., a top number of 2, 3, 4, or 6). Likewise, any note length can be used to represent a beat, but a quarter note (indicated by a bottom number of 4) or eighth note (bottom number of 8) are by far the most common.
A rest may also have a dot after it, increasing its duration by half, but this is less commonly used than with notes, except occasionally in modern music notated in compound meters such as 6 8 or 12 8. In these meters the long-standing convention has been to indicate one beat of rest as a quarter rest followed by an eighth rest (equivalent to ...
A single eighth note, or any faster note, is always stemmed with flags, while two or more are usually beamed in groups. [16] 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.
Quarter tone on C. A quarter tone is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale or an interval about half as wide (orally, or logarithmically) as a semitone, which itself is half a whole tone. Quarter tones divide the octave by 50 cents each, and have 24 different pitches.
Without dot 3 or 6, the indicated note is an eighth note (quaver). With dot 6, it is a quarter note; dot 3, a half note; and dots 3,6, a whole note. [9] Every rhythm symbol does double up in meaning: 8th notes match 128th notes; quarter notes (crotchets) match 64th notes; half notes match 32nd notes; and whole notes match 16th notes (semiquavers).
8 meter) take the time normally totaled by three eighth notes, equal to a dotted quarter note. Four quadruplet (or quartole) eighth notes would also equal a dotted quarter note. The duplet eighth note is thus exactly the same duration as a dotted eighth note, but the duplet notation is far more common in compound meters. [35]