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
Famous quotes containing the word note:
“I note what you say of the late disturbances in your College. These dissensions are a great affliction on the American schools, and a principal impediment to education in this country.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“... if we look around us in social life and note down who are the faithful wives, the most patient and careful mothers, the most exemplary housekeepers, the model sisters, the wisest philanthropists, and the women of the most social influence, we will have to admit that most frequently they are women of cultivated minds, without which even warm hearts and good intentions are but partial influences.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“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)