Skip to main content
Topic: Note values (Read 6222 times) previous topic - next topic

Note values

Why has nwc not added 128th notes yet!!

I need them for pathetique!

IT CAN'T BE THAT DIFFICULT TO HALF THE VALUE ONCE MORE

Re: Note values

Reply #1
My music teacher told me that 128th notes didn't exist. I'd love to see them in print!

Re: Note values

Reply #2
are you sure you need them? Are they actually in pathetique? My friend plays that peice and I looked at the sheet music and I don't remember any 128th notes.

Re: Note values

Reply #3
They DO exist!
The Pathétique has them in measures 4 and 10, and I have seen them elsewhere.

Re: Note values

Reply #4
Cool, I wasn't saying they didn't exist or anything, I just hadn't seen them before. :P
Ev

Re: Note values

Reply #5
And can we have breves (double whole notes) - they certainly exist too!

Re: Note values

Reply #6
128th notes are also known as..

The semihemidemisemiquaver

Re: Note values

Reply #7
No, a whole note is a semibreve. The longa AFAIK is no longer used but would be a dupledoublewholenote ;-)

Re: Note values

Reply #8
No, the piling on of prefixes is a British phenomenon. Americans would call such a thing, if it existed, a quadruple whole note.

Re: Note values

Reply #9
so 256th notes should be demi-semi-hemi-demi-semi-quavers? or DSHDSquaver to make short :)

Re: Note values

Reply #10
Or (refering to 128th notes):

quasihemidemisemiquavers

Cyril

(I've actually seen that someplace, but haven't been able to re-locate it.)

Re: Note values

Reply #11
Peter,
I thought a breve is a whole note. A double whole is a "longa" and a half is a "minim" (quarter = crotchet, eighth=quaver, sixteenth= semiquaver, etc.) Did I learn this wrong?

Re: Note values

Reply #12
I found myself idly wondering why we [British] never refer to the hemidemisemibreve which is of course far more rational then crotchet, and the semihemidemisemibreve which is far more elegant than quaver ;-)


Re: Note values

Reply #14
At least a hemidemisemimetre.

Re: Note values

Reply #15
12.5 cm??!! Wow, I'm impressed!

Re: Note values

Reply #16
having said that the longa is no longer, I came across an actual example today in the horn part of an orchestral score.

It seems that where there are multiple bars rest then you can put in long rests up to the total number of bars.

The semibreve is of course a black rectangle taking up the top half of the C space (treble clef), and the breve is almost the same rectangle turned on end so that it covers the whole C space (it is cionsiderably narrower than the semibreve or minim rests). And then we come to the longa rest which is the same width as the breve but covers the a space too. In the score I'm looking at (Rossini Stabat Mater) the copyist indicated up to twelve bars rest in this way with thre vertical bars (3 longa rests) in a single bar, but for greater intervals used a diagonal thick line and the numbers of bars rest instead.

 

Re: Note values

Reply #17
That practice, however, is obsolete (thankfully).