Musical note

A musical note is a single, isolatable sound and the fundamental building block of most music. This separation of sound into discrete units makes music easier to perform, understand, and analyze. Notes can be written down using musical notation.

Notes can indicate either a general pitch class or a specific pitch played by an instrument. For unpitched percussion, notes distinguish between different instruments or playing techniques rather than pitch. A note’s value shows its duration relative to the meter, while dynamics tell a performer how loudly to play. Articulations shape how the note begins and ends, and can express changes in timbre or pitch. Special symbols may even indicate extended techniques.

The word “note” can refer to a specific musical event—like the two notes of identical pitch that begin “Happy Birthday to You”—or to a general class of sounds that are identical, as in “the song begins with the same note repeated twice.”

**Duration**

A note’s value sets its length in relation to the musical meter. The standard values, in order of halving duration, are longa, breve, semibreve, minim, crotchet, quaver, semiquaver, demisemiquaver, and hemidemisemiquaver. Longer values (like the longa) and shorter ones (like the two hundred fifty-sixth note) exist but are rare today. Durations can be subdivided with tuplets or extended with dots. A tie can combine two notes to create a duration not possible with a single note value. A rhythm is a sequence of notes and rests of various durations; it is independent of pitch, so transposing a melody to a different scale leaves its rhythm unchanged.

**Pitch**

In much of Europe, solfège is used: “fixed do” assigns the syllables re–mi–fa–sol–la–si specifically to the C major scale, while “movable do” applies the same syllables to any major scale. In English-speaking regions, the Netherlands, and Germany, pitch classes are usually represented by the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, corresponding to the A minor scale. Germany and Czechia use H instead of B. Byzantium used the names Pa–Vu–Ga–Di–Ke–Zo–Ni. A single note is sometimes called a monad. In traditional Indian music, notes are called svaras and are represented by Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, and Ni.

On a staff, each note is placed on a specific line or space, determined by the clef. Each line or space has a note name, which musicians memorize to know the correct pitch. For example, a staff can show the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C and back down, with no key signature or accidentals.

Notes that belong to the diatonic scale in a tonal context are called diatonic notes; those that do not are chromatic notes or accidentals. Accidentals are symbols that modify a note’s pitch. The sharp (♯) raises it by a half step (a semitone, with a frequency ratio of 12√2 ≈ 1.0595), and the flat (♭) lowers it by a half step. The natural (♮) cancels any previous accidental. Double-sharp () and double-flat () symbols raise or lower the pitch by two semitones, and even more advanced symbols exist for quarter tones. In text, accidentals are written to the right of the letter (e.g., F♯); on a staff, they are placed to the left of the notehead. A key signature applies systematic alterations to all occurrences of a lettered pitch class. Additional accidentals in a bar override the key signature for subsequent notes of that pitch class in that bar, but this effect does not accumulate for later accidentals on the same pitch class.

Assuming enharmonicity, accidentals can make different notes sound the same (e.g., B♯ equals C). This creates a 12-note chromatic scale, adding five pitch classes to the seven lettered ones. Different countries use different names for these 12 pitch classes; for example, German and English notation differ, though their symbols are identical.

Two pitches that are a whole number of octaves apart (their frequencies are in a ratio of a power of two) sound very similar. Because of this, all such notes can be grouped under the same pitch class.