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
Note value renaissance music, and the terms of Latin origin had international currency at that time. Obviously, "longa" means 'long', and the rest rarely indicate relative shortness. "Breve" is from Latin "brevis", 'short', "minim" is from "minimus", 'very small', and "quaver" refers to the quavering effect of very fast notes. The elements "semi-", "demi-" and "hemi-" mean 'half' in Latin, French and Greek respectively. The chain semantic shift whereby notes which were originally perceived as short came progressively to be long notes is interesting both linguistically and musically. However, the "crotchet" is named after the shape of the note, from the Old