The Complete Idiot''s Guide to Music Theory

Definition
Two different quarter notes, pointing in both directions.

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Chapter 5:
Note Values and Basic Notation
61
Eighth Notes
Just like the scientists in 
Fantastic Voyage
or that miniature DC Comics super-
hero called the Atom, notes just keep getting smaller. Again, we’re operating
on a 2-to-1 ratio, so let’s take a quarter note and divide it in half. Doing the
math, 
1
⁄
4
÷ 2 = 
1
⁄
8
—so the next-smallest note is the 
eighth note.
Just as there are four quarter notes in a measure of 4/4 time (4 
×
1
⁄
4
= 1), each
measure holds eight eighth notes (8 
×
1
⁄
8
= 1). Put another way, there are two
eighth notes for every quarter note (2 
×
1
⁄
8
= 
1
⁄
4
)—or two eighth notes for every
beat.
An eighth note looks like a quarter note with a 
flag
on it. If you have two or
more eighth notes in a row, the flags can be replaced with horizontal stems at
the end of the normal horizontal stems. (The flags don’t have to be joined
together; sometimes it’s just easier to read that way.)
A
flag
is the little
doohickey dangling off the
stem of eighth notes, six-
teenth notes, and all smaller
notes. (It actually looks like
a country’s flag flying off a
mast.) The flag is always
at the end of the stem, so
if the stem is pointing up,
the flag is above the note-
head; if the stem is point-
ing down, the flag is
below the notehead.
Definition
A variety of different eighth notes.
Sixteenth Notes
Okay, you know where this is going. Half an eighth note is (do the math!) a 
six-
teenth note 
(
1
⁄
8
÷ 2 = 
1
⁄
16
). There are 16 sixteenth notes in a measure (16 
×
1
⁄
16
= 1),
or 4 sixteenth notes per one quarter-note beat (4 
×
1
⁄
16
= 
1
⁄
4
).
A sixteenth note looks like a quarter note with 
two
flags on it. As with the eighth
note, if 2 or more sixteenth notes are next to each other, the flags may (or may
not) be joined together.
A variety of different sixteenth notes.
Although we’ll end this discussion with sixteenth notes, there are lots of notes even
smaller than that. Each successive note is half the value of the previous note and
is indicated by an additional flag on the stem.
For example, the thirty-second note is the next-smallest note after the sixteenth note; 
it has three flags on its stem. After that is the sixty-fourth note, with four flags. In
actuality, you won’t run into too many notes smaller than the sixteenth note.
Note

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