Eighth note which are graphical dingbats). Eighth notes in , , , and are beamed three eighth notes at a time. A single eighth note is always stemmed with a flag, while two or more are usually beamed in groups . Eighth note An eighth note (American) or a quaver (British) is a musical note played for half the value of a quarter note (crotchet) and twice that of the sixteenth note (semiquaver), which amounts to one quarter the duration of a half note (minim), one eighth the duration of whole note (semibreve), one sixteenth the duration of a double whole note
Mensural notation and short notes (minims and crotchets), or groups of three short notes. In the 13th century, all of these were notated using only the longa and breve notes. A longa was automatically understood to fill a whole ternary metric group whenever it was in the neighborhood of other notes that did the same, i.e., whenever it was followed either by another longa or by a full group of three breves. When, however, the longa was preceded or followed by a single breve, then both filled a ternary group together. Thus, the longa had to be reduced to a value of