Whole note

In music, a whole note (American) or semibreve (British) is a note represented by a hollow oval note head, like a half note (or minim), and no note stem (see Figure 1). Its length is equal to four beats in 4/4 time. Most other notes are fractions of the whole note; half notes are played for one half the duration of the whole note, quarter notes (or crotchets) are each played for one quarter the duration, etc.

A whole note lasts half as long as a double whole note (or breve—hence the British name, semibreve), and twice as long as a half note, or minim. The symbol is first found in music notation from the late thirteenth century (Morehen and Rastall 2001).

A related symbol is the whole rest (or semibreve rest), which usually denotes a silence for the same duration. Whole rests are drawn as filled-in rectangles generally hanging under the second line from the top of a musical staff, though they may occasionally be put under a different line in more complicated passages, such as when two instruments or vocalists are written on one staff, and one is temporarily silent.