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 Music is generally defined as the The arts, art of arranging sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Exact definition of music, definitions of mu ...

, a 1/16, sixteenth note ( American) or semiquaver (

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

note Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to: Music and entertainment * Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music * Notes (album), ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian * ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) sho ...

played for half the duration of an

eighth note 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) or a quaver ( British) is a musical note pl ...

(quaver), hence the names. It is the equivalent of the semifusa 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 rhythmi ...

, first found in 15th-century notation. Sixteenth notes are notated with an oval, filled-in

note head In music, a notehead is the part of a note, usually elliptical in shape, whose placement on the staff indicates the pitch, to which modifications are made that indicate duration. Noteheads may be the same shape but colored completely bl ...

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, ...

with two

flag A flag is a piece of fabric (most often rectangular or quadrilateral) with a distinctive design and colours. It is used as a symbol, a signalling device, or for decoration. The term ''flag'' is also used to refer to the graphic design emp ...

s (see Figure 1). A single sixteenth note is always stemmed with flags, while two or more are usually beamed in groups. A corresponding symbol is the sixteenth rest (or semiquaver rest), which denotes a silence for the same duration. As with all notes with stems, sixteenth notes are drawn with stems to the right of the notehead, facing up, when they are below the middle line of the

musical staff In Western musical notation, the staff (US and UK)"staff" in the Collins ...

(or on the middle line, in vocal music). When they are on the middle line (in instrumental music) or above it, they are drawn with stems on the left of the note head, facing down. Flags are always on the right side of the stem, and curve to the right. On stems facing up, the flags start at the top and curve down; for downward facing stems, the flags start at the bottom of the stem and curve up. When multiple sixteenth notes or eighth notes (or thirty-second notes, etc.) are next to each other, the flags may be connected with a

beam Beam may refer to: Streams of particles or energy * Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy ** Laser beam * Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles **Charged particle beam, a spatially localized g ...

, like the notes in Figure 2. Note the similarities in notating sixteenth notes and

s. Similar rules apply to smaller divisions such as

thirty-second note In music, a thirty-second note (American) or demisemiquaver (British) is a note played for of the duration of a whole note (or ''semibreve''). It lasts half as long as a sixteenth note (or ''semiquaver'') and twice as long as a sixty-fourt ...

s (demisemiquavers) and

sixty-fourth note In music notation, a sixty-fourth note (American), or hemidemisemiquaver or semidemisemiquaver (British), sometimes called a half-thirty-second note, is a note played for half the duration of a thirty-second note (or demisemiquaver), hence the name ...

s (hemidemisemiquavers). In

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

, U+266C (♬) is a pair of beamed semiquavers. The note derives from the ''semifusa'' in

. However, ''semifusa'' also designates the modern sixty-fourth note in Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese.

References

{{Musical note values Note values

See also

References