In music, the term note has two primary meanings:
- A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;
- A pitched sound itself.
Notes are the "atoms" of much Western music: discretizations of musical phenomena that facilitate performance, comprehension, and analysis.
The term "note" can be used in both generic and specific senses: one might say either "the piece 'Happy Birthday to You' begins with two notes having the same pitch," or "the piece begins with two repetitions of the same note." In the former case, one uses "note" to refer to a specific musical event; in the latter, one uses the term to refer to a class of events sharing the same pitch.
Read more about Note: Note Name, Written Notes, Note Frequency (hertz), History of Note Names
Other articles related to "note, notes":
... presents the theme almost whole it lacks only the last note ... then enters, beginning a series of variations which deconstruct the theme note by note ... In the final section, the theme is rebuilt, note by note, from the middle note, until it resembles a Russian Orthodox hymn ...
... of Gregorian chant, using varying styles of square-note neumes, circulated throughout the Catholic Church for centuries ... many of the chants, and developed a standardized form of the square-note notation which was adopted by the Catholic Church and is still in use in publications such as the Liber Usualis (although there are ... As a general rule, the notes of a single neume are never sung to more than one syllable all three pitches of a three-note neume, for example, must all be sung on the same syllable ...
... indicate a subsidiary accent when there are five or more notes in a neume group Horizontal episema (horizontal stroke) Used over a single note or a group of notes (as shown), essentially ... Liquescent neume (small note) Can occur on almost any type of neume usually associated with certain letter combinations such as double consonants ...
... fifteen letters of the alphabet to signify the notes of the two-octave range that was in use at the time ... When the compass of used notes was extended down by one note, to a G, it was given the Greek G (Γ), gamma ... and the English word gamut, from "Gamma-Ut", the lowest note in Medieval music notation.) The remaining five notes of the chromatic scale (the black keys on a piano keyboard) were added gradually the first ...
... These are pound sterling notes and equal in value to Bank of England notes, and should not be confused with banknotes of the former Irish pound ... Earlier note issues by the bank were made under the bank's previous names the Provincial Bank of Ireland Ltd ... First Trust Bank's current notes depict two generic people, one male, one female ...
Famous quotes containing the word note:
“Alexander Woollcott broadcasts the story of the wife who returned a dog to the Seeing Eye with this note attached: “I am sending the dog back. My husband used to depend on me. Now he is independent, and I never know where he is.””
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“And songs climb out of the flames of the near campfires,
Pale, pastel things exquisite in their frailness
With a note or two to indicate it isn’t lost,
On them at least. The songs decorate our notion of the world
And mark its limits, like a frieze of soap-bubbles.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“To note an artist’s limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)