Sixteenth note Sixteenth note In music, a sixteenth note (American) or semiquaver (British) is a note played for half the duration of an eighth note (quaver), hence the names. It is the equivalent of the semifusa in mensural notation, first found in 15th-century notation . Sixteenth notes are notated with an oval, filled-in note head and a straight note stem with two flags (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
Quarter note the hook used on the note in black notation. However, because the hook appeared on the eighth note (or quaver) in the later white notation, the modern French term refers to an eighth note. 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