Double whole note Double whole note In music, a double whole note (American), breve (international), or double note (; ) is a note lasting two times as long as a whole note (or "semibreve"). It is the second-longest note value still in use in modern music notation (; ). In medieval mensural notation, the "brevis" was one of the shortest note lengths in use —hence its name, which is the Latin etymon of "brief". In "perfect" rhythmic mode, the brevis was a third of a "longa", or in "imperfect" mode, half a "longa" . In modern notation, a breve is commonly represented in
How Sacred Harp music is sung is a note whose duration is increased by half the duration of the base note. It is so called because musical notation uses a dot to express this durational ratio. Traditional Sacred Harp singers often "add dots" to their music, in the sense that they will make the notes falling on the strong musical beat about one and a half times as long as written, with the following note shortened to half of its written duration in compensation. The great majority of the cases seem to involve substitution of the sequence "dotted eighth + sixteenth" for what is written as