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
Note value of the 18th century and earlier the amount by which the dot augmented the note varied: it could be more or less than the modern interpretation, to fit into the context. To divide a note value to three equal parts, or some other value than two, tuplets may be used. However, see swung note and notes inégales. Although note heads of various shapes, and notes with and without stems appear in early Gregorian chant manuscripts, many scholars agree that these symbols do not indicate different durations, although the dot is used for augmentation. See neume. In the 13th century, chant