A rest is 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 the br ...

for a defined period of time in music, or one of the

musical notation Musical notation is any system used to visually represent music. Systems of notation generally represent the elements of a piece of music that are considered important for its performance in the context of a given musical tradition. The proce ...

signs used to indicate that. The length of a rest corresponds with that of a particular

note value In music notation, a note value indicates the relative duration (music), duration of a note (music), note, using the texture or shape of the ''notehead'', the presence or absence of a ''stem (music), stem'', and the presence or absence of ''flags ...

, thus indicating how long the silence should last. Each type of rest is named for the note value it corresponds with (e.g. quarter note and quarter rest, or quaver and quaver rest), and each of them has a distinctive sign.

Description

Rests are intervals of

silence Silence is the absence of ambient hearing, audible sound, the emission of sounds of such low sound intensity, intensity that they do not draw attention to themselves, or the state of having ceased to produce sounds; this latter sense can be exten ...

in pieces of

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

, marked by symbols indicating the length of the silence. Each rest symbol and name corresponds with a particular

, 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 ov ...

* The quarter (crotchet) rest (𝄽) may take a different 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 silence follows the same rules as for

s.''AB guide to music theory'' by E. Taylor, chapter 13/1,

One-bar rest

When an entire

bar Bar or BAR may refer to: Food and drink * Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages * Candy bar ** Chocolate bar * Protein bar Science and technology * Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment * Bar (tropical cyclone), a laye ...

is devoid of notes, a whole (semibreve) rest is used, regardless of the actual

time signature A time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, and measure signature) is an indication in music notation that specifies how many note values of a particular type fit into each measure ( bar). The time signature indicates th ...

. Historically exceptions were made 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: Allyn 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 manuscripts and facsimiles of them, bars of rest are sometimes left completely empty and unmarked, 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. A multimeasure rest is usually drawn in one of two ways: * As a thick horizontal line 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, resembling a large heavy minus sign or equals sign set at a slant (the diagonal style is much less common than the horizontal one; although a small number of publishers use it, it is more commonly found in modern manuscripts in a casual style). Both variants of thick line rests are drawn in the same shape each time, regardless of how many bars' rest they represent. * The older system of notating multirests (deriving from Baroque notation conventions that were adapted from the old mensural rest system dating from Medieval times) draws each multimeasure rest according to the picture above right unless it will exceed a certain number of bars; rests longer than that limit are drawn using the thick horizontal line mentioned above. How long a multimeasure rest must be before resorting to a horizontal line is a matter of personal taste or editorial policy; most publishers use ten bars as the changing point, however, larger and smaller changing points are used, especially in earlier music. The number of bars for which a horizontal line 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 change of meter or key occurs during a multimeasure rest, that rest must be divided into shorter sections for clarity, with the changes of key and/or meter indicated between the rests. Multimeasure rests must also be divided at double barlines, which demarcate musical phrases or sections, and at

rehearsal letter A rehearsal letter, sometimes referred to as rehearsal marks, rehearsal figures, or rehearsal numbers, is a boldface letter of the alphabet in an orchestral score, and its corresponding parts, that provides the conductor, who typically leads rehears ...

Dotted rest

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 In poetic and musical meter, and by analogy in publishing, an anacrusis (from , , literally: 'pushing up', plural ''anacruses'') is a brief introduction. In music, it is also known as a pickup beat, or fractional pick-up, i.e. a note or seque ...

General pause

In a score for an ensemble piece, "G.P." (''general pause'') indicates silence for one bar or more for the entire ensemble. Specifically marking general pauses each time they occur (rather than writing them as ordinary rests) is relevant for performers, as making any kind of noise should be avoided there—for instance, page turns in sheet music are not made during general pauses, as the sound of turning the page becomes noticeable when no one is playing.Elaine Gould, '' Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation'', p. 561. Faber Music (publisher), 2011.

References