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A rest is a
musical notation Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of written, printed, or otherwise-produced symbols, including notation f ...
sign A sign is an object, quality, event, or entity whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else. A natural sign bears a causal relation to its object—for instance, thunder is a sign of storm, or ...
that indicates the absence of a
sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by ...
. Each rest symbol and name corresponds with a particular note value for
length Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Inte ...
, indicating how long the silence should last.


Description

Rests are intervals of silence in pieces of
music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...
, marked by symbols indicating the length of the pause. Each rest symbol and name corresponds with a particular note value, indicating how long the silence should last, generally as a multiplier of a measure or
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 ...
. * The quarter (crotchet) rest (đť„˝) may also be found as a form in older music.''History of Music Notation'' (1937) by C. Gorden, p. 93. * The four-measure rest or longa rest are only used in long silent passages which are not divided into bars. * The combination of rests used to mark a pause follows the same rules as for note values.''AB guide to music theory'' by E. Taylor, chapter 13/1,


One-bar rests

When an entire
bar Bar or BAR may refer to: Food and drink * Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages * Candy bar * Chocolate bar Science and technology * Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment * Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud * Bar ( ...
is devoid of notes, a whole (semibreve) rest is used, regardless of the actual
time signature The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note va ...
. Historically an exception was for a time signature (four half notes per bar), when a double whole (breve) rest was typically used for a bar's rest, and for time signatures shorter than , when a rest of the actual measure length would be used. ''Music Notation: A Manual of Modern Practice'', second edition, by Gardner Read (Boston: Alyn and Bacon, 1969): 98. (Reprinted, New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1979). Some published (usually earlier) music places the numeral "" above the rest to confirm the extent of the rest. Occasionally in manuscript autographs and facsimiles, bars without notes are sometimes left completely empty, possibly even without the staves.


Multiple measure rests

In instrumental parts, rests of more than one bar in the same meter and key may be indicated with a multimeasure rest (British English: multiple bar rest), showing the number of bars of rest, as shown. Multimeasure rests of are usually drawn in one of two ways: * As long, thick horizontal lines placed on the middle line of the staff, with serifs at both ends (see above middle picture) or as thick diagonal lines placed between the second and fourth lines of the staff (but this method is much less used than the above method; although a small number of publishers use this method, it most commonly used casually in modern manuscripts), regardless of how many bars' rests it represents; * The former system of notating multirests (deriving from Baroque notation conventions that were adapted from the old mensural rest system dating from Medieval times) draws multirests according to the picture above right until a certain amount of bar rests is reached when multirests are then drawn to the first method. How long exactly must a multirest be until the above method is used is largely a matter of personal taste, most publishers use ten as the changing point, however bigger and smaller changing points are used, especially in earlier music. The number of whole-rest lengths for which the multimeasure rest lasts is indicated by a number printed above the musical staff (usually at the same size as the numerals in a time signature). If a meter or key change occurs during a multimeasure rest, the rest must be broken up as required for clarity, with the change of key and/or meter indicated between the rests. This also applies in the case of double barlines, which demarcate musical phrases or sections, and also if a
rehearsal letter A rehearsal letter is a boldface letter of the alphabet in an orchestral score, and its corresponding parts, that provides the conductor, who typically leads rehearsals, with a convenient spot to tell the orchestra to begin at places other than t ...
occurs during the rest..


Dotted rests

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 or . 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 three eighths). See: Anacrusis.


General pause

In a score for an ensemble piece, "G.P." (''general pause'') indicates silence for one bar or more for the entire ensemble. The marking of general pauses is relevant, as making noise should be avoided there—for instance, page turns in sheet music are avoided during general pauses, as the sound of players turning the page would be audible by the audience.Elaine Gould, ''Behind Bars – The Definitive Guide to Music Notation'', p. 561. Faber Music (publisher), 2011.


See also

*
Caesura 300px, An example of a caesura in modern western music notation A caesura (, . caesuras or caesurae; Latin for " cutting"), also written cæsura and cesura, is a metrical pause or break in a verse where one phrase ends and another phrase begin ...
* List of silent musical compositions *
List of 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, duration, dynamics, ...
*
Tacet Tacet is Latin which translates literally into English as "(it) is silent" (pronounced: , , or ). It is a musical term to indicate that an instrument or voice does not sound, also known as a rest. In vocal polyphony and in orchestral scores, it ...


References

{{Musical notation Musical notation Rhythm and meter Silence de:Notenwert#Pausen