Half note Half note In music, a half note (American) or minim (British) is a note played for half the duration of a whole note (or semibreve) and twice the duration of a quarter note (or crotchet). It was given its Latin name ("minima", meaning "least or smallest") because it was the shortest of the five note values used in early medieval music notation . In time signatures with 4 as the bottom number, such as or , the half note is two beats long. However, when 2 is the bottom number (including "alla breve", ), the half note is one beat
Two hundred fifty-sixth note (1800), to notate rapid scales. Another example is in Mozart's Variations on "Je suis Lindor" (1778), where four of them are used in the slow ("molto adagio") twelfth variation. A further example occurs ("Grave.Adagio non troppo") in Jan Ladislav Dussek's (1760–1812) Fifth Piano Sonata, Op. 10 No. 2. They also occur ("Largo") in Vivaldi's (1678–1741) Concerto, RV 444, and in bar 15 of François Couperin's "Second Prelude" from "L'art de toucher le clavecin" (1716). The next note value shorter than the two hundred fifty-sixth note is the five hundred twelfth note with seven flags or beams; it is half as