Note

In music, the term note has two primary meanings:

  1. A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;
  2. 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:

    “There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading ... may be given without first getting the author’s permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.”
    —Robert Benchley (1889–1945)

    “Is whispering nothing?
    Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses?
    Kissing with inside lip? Stopping the career
    Of laughter with a sigh?—a note infallible
    Of breaking honesty.”
    —William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    “What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower?
    And all alone comes riding there
    The King that could make his people stare,
    Because he had feathers instead of hair.
    A slow low note and an iron bell.”
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)