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A quarter note (American) or crotchet ( ) (British) is a 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 
, or occasionally, as the older symbol 
.''Rudiments and Theory of Music'' Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, London 1958. I,33 and III,25. The former section shows both forms without distinction, the latter the "old" form only. The book was the Official ABRSM theory manual in the UK up until at least 1975. The "old" form was taught as a manuscript variant of the printed form.
stem
Stem or STEM may refer to:
Plant structures
* Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang
* Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure
* Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...
. The stem usually points upwards if it is below the middle line of the staff
Staff may refer to:
Pole
* Staff, a weapon used in stick-fighting
** Quarterstaff, a European pole weapon
* Staff of office, a pole that indicates a position
* Staff (railway signalling), a token authorizing a locomotive driver to use a particula ...
, and downwards if it is on or above the middle line. An upward stem is placed on the right side of the notehead, a downward stem is placed on the left (see image). The Unicode symbol is U+2669 (♩).
A quarter rest (or crotchet rest) denotes a silence of the same duration as a quarter note. It typically appears as the symbol , or occasionally, as the older symbol .''Rudiments and Theory of Music'' Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, London 1958. I,33 and III,25. The former section shows both forms without distinction, the latter the "old" form only. The book was the Official ABRSM theory manual in the UK up until at least 1975. The "old" form was taught as a manuscript variant of the printed form.
History
The note derives from the ('half minim') of mensural notation. The word "crotchet" comes from Old French , meaning 'little hook', diminutive of , 'hook', because of the hook used on the note in black notation. The quarter note is played for half the length of a half note and twice that of an eighth note. It is one beat in a bar of . The term "quarter note" is a calque (loan translation) of the German term . The names of this note (and rest) in many other languages are calqued from the same source; Romance languages usually use a term derived from the Latin meaning 'black': The Catalan, French, Galician, and Spanish names for the note (all of them meaning 'black') derive from the fact that the was the longest note to be colored in mensural white notation, which is true as well of the modern form. The Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Serbian and Slovak names mean "quarter" (for the note) and "quarter's pause" (for the rest).See also
* List of musical symbolsNotes
References
{{Musical note values Note values