Thirty-second note connected with a beam. Similar rules apply to smaller divisions such as sixty-fourth notes. A related symbol is the thirty-second rest or demisemiquaver rest (shown to the right), which denotes a silence for the same duration. Thirty-second note In music, a demisemiquaver (British) or thirty-second note (American) 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-fourth (or "hemidemisemiquaver"). Thirty-second notes are notated with an oval, filled-in note head and a straight note stem with three flags or
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