Ghost note (of Motown), Rocco Prestia (for Tower of Power), and Chuck Rainey (for Steely Dan, Aretha Franklin, and others) all include "tons of ghost notes done right" in their playing. In vocal music, especially in musical theater, a ghost note represents that the lyrics must be spoken rather than sung, retaining the marked rhythm but having indeterminate pitch. Notes with value less than a half note use an "X" instead of an oval as a note head. Occasionally a half note or whole note is represented with an open diamond note head, often representing a scream or grunt. As an extreme
Augmentation (music) be called augmentation. A melody or series of notes is "augmented" if the lengths of the notes are prolonged; augmentation is thus the opposite of diminution, where note values are shortened. A melody originally consisting of four quavers (eighth notes) for example, is augmented if it later appears with four crotchets (quarter notes) instead. This technique is often used in contrapuntal music, as in the "canon by augmentation" (""per augmentationem""), in which the notes in the following voice or voices are longer than those in the leading voice, usually twice the original length. The music of Johann Sebastian Bach provides