180px, Figure 1. An eighth note with stem extending up, an eighth note with stem extending down, and an eighth rest. 180px, Figure 2. Four eighth notes beamed together. An eighth note (

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

) or a quaver (

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

) is a musical note played for one eighth the duration of a

whole note A whole note (American) or semibreve (British) in musical notation is a single note equivalent to or lasting as long as two half notes or four quarter notes. Description The whole note or semibreve has a note head in the shape of a hollow o ...

(semibreve). Its length relative to other rhythmic values is as expected—e.g., half the duration of a

quarter note A quarter note (American) or crotchet ( ) (British) is a note (music), musical note played for one quarter of the duration of a whole note (or semibreve). Quarter notes are notated with a filled-in oval note head and a straight, flagless ste ...

(crotchet), one quarter the duration of a

half note ''Half Note'' is a live album by saxophonist Clifford Jordan which was recorded in 1974 and first released on the SteepleChase label in 1985.

(minim), and twice the value of a

sixteenth note Figure 1. A 16th note with stem facing up, a 16th note with stem facing down, and a 16th rest. Figure 2. Four 16th notes beamed together. In music, a 1/16, sixteenth note (American) or semiquaver (British) is a note played for half the dura ...

. It is the equivalent of the ''fusa'' in

mensural notation Mensural notation is the musical notation system used for European vocal polyphonic music from the later part of the 13th century until about 1600. The term "mensural" refers to the ability of this system to describe precisely measured rhythm ...

. Eighth notes are notated with an oval, filled-in note head and a straight

note stem In musical notation, stems are the, "thin, vertical lines that are directly connected to the otehead." Stems may point up or down. Different-pointing stems indicate the voice for polyphonic music written on the same staff. Within one voice, t ...

with one note flag (see Figure 1). The stem is on the right of the notehead extending upwards or on the left extending downwards, depending primarily on where the notehead lies relative to the middle line of the staff. A related symbol is the eighth rest (or quaver rest), which denotes a silence for the same duration. Eighth notes may be beamed together in groups (Figure 2). In , , , and they are typically beamed in groups of three. A single eighth note is always stemmed with a flag, while two or more are usually beamed in groups in instrumental music. In

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

, the symbol U+266A (♪) is a single eighth note and U+266B (♫) is a beamed pair of eighth notes. These symbols are inherited from the early 1980s

code page 437 Code page 437 (CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer). It is also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437, PC-8, or DOS Latin US. The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (diacri ...

, where they occupied codes 13 and 14 respectively. Additions to the Unicode standard incorporated eighth note depictions from Japanese

emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversat ...

sets: ascending eighth notes (U+1F39C, 🎜), descending eighth notes (U+1F39D, 🎝), a graphical generic musical note generally depicted as an eighth note (U+1F3B5, 🎵), and three unconnected eighth notes in sequence (U+1F3B6, 🎶). All of these are graphical

dingbat In typography, a dingbat (sometimes more formally known as a printer's ornament or printer's character) is an ornament, specifically, a glyph used in typesetting, often employed to create box frames, (similar to box-drawing characters) or a ...

s. In contrast, Unicode's

Musical Symbols Musical symbols are marks and symbols in musical notation that indicate various aspects of how a piece of music is to be performed. There are symbols to communicate information about many musical elements, including Pitch (music), pitch, Duration ...

block includes eighth note symbols designed to be used in computerized musical notation.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eighth Note Note values

See also

References