Reading Music

Rests

In music, silence is just as important as sound. How do we notate silence? We notate silence by using symbols called rest notes, or simply rests.

There is an equivalent rest symbol for each note value. Below we can see the corresponding rest symbols for the note values we already know:

Note Name
(USA)
Note Name
(England)
Symbol Rest
Whole Note Semibreve
Half Note Minim
Quarter Note Crotchet

Example:

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Translated by Dan Román, English version revised by Sue Talley