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In 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 ...
, a half note (American) or minim (British) 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), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian
* ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened versi ...
played for half 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 ov ...
(or semibreve) and twice the duration of a quarter note
A quarter note ( AmE) or crotchet ( BrE) () 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 stem. The stem usually ...
(or crotchet). It was given its Latin name (''minima'', meaning "least or smallest") because it was the shortest of the five note values used in early medieval music notation.
Half notes are notated with a hollow oval notehead
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 b ...
like a whole note and straight note stem
In musical notation, stems are the "thin, vertical line (geometry), lines that are directly connected to the notehead, otehead." Stems may point up or down. Different-pointing stems indicate the voice (music), voice for polyphonic music writ ...
with no flags
A flag is a piece of fabric (most often rectangular) with distinctive colours and design. It is used as a symbol, a signalling device, or for decoration. The term ''flag'' is also used to refer to the graphic design employed, and flags have ...
like a quarter note (see Figure 1). The half rest (or minim rest) denotes a silence of the same duration. Half rests are drawn as filled-in rectangles sitting on top of the middle line of the , although in polyphonic
Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ...
music the rest may need to be moved to a different line or even a ledger line
A ledger line or leger line is used in Western musical notation to notate pitches above or below the lines and spaces of the regular musical staff. A line slightly longer than the note head is drawn parallel to the staff, above or below, spaced ...
. As with all notes with stems, half notes are drawn with upward stems on the right when they are below the middle line of the staff and downward stems on the left when they are on or above the middle line. In vocal music, notes on the middle line have a downward stem instead of an upward stem.
The American term ''half note'' is a 19th-century loan translation
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language whil ...
of German ''halbe Note''.
The Catalan, French, and Spanish names (''blanca'', ''blanche'', meaning "white") derive from the fact that the ''minima'' was the shortest unfilled note in mensural white notation, which is true of the modern form as well. The form in the earlier black notation resembles the modern quarter note (crotchet). The Greek, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean names mean "half", and in Greek, the modern word (''miso'' – μισό) and older (''imisi'' – ήμισι) are used.
See also
*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 (music), pitch, Duration ...
References