What are the note values in music and how many beats does each one get?

In 4/4, a whole note is four beats, a half note two, a quarter note one, an eighth note half a beat and a sixteenth note a quarter of a beat. Each value is half the one above it. The beat count changes with the time signature: the bottom number names the note that gets one beat.

How many eighth notes are in a half note?

Four eighth notes fit in a half note. A half note equals two quarter notes, and each quarter note equals two eighth notes, so the half note covers four eighths. The same ratio holds in every time signature, because note values are proportions rather than fixed durations.

How many beats does a half note get?

A half note gets two beats in 4/4, 3/4, 2/4 and any other meter whose bottom number is 4. In 2/2 it gets one beat, because the half note itself is the beat. In 6/8 a half note covers four of the six eighth-note counts.

How many beats is a half rest?

A half rest is two beats in 4/4, exactly as long as a half note. Rests mirror note values one for one. The half rest sits on the third line of the staff, while the whole rest hangs below the fourth line and lasts four beats in 4/4.

What is the difference between a quarter note and an eighth note?

An eighth note lasts half as long as a quarter note, so two eighth notes fill the time of one quarter note. On the page, a quarter note has a filled head and a plain stem, while an eighth note adds one flag, or a single beam when it is grouped with its neighbors.

Is a whole note always four beats?

A whole note is four beats only when the quarter note gets the beat, as in 4/4 or 3/4. In 2/2 a whole note is two beats, and in 6/8 it covers eight of the eighth-note counts. The shape always equals four quarter notes; what changes is which note is called a beat.

Note Values: How Many Beats Each Note Gets

The line in front of you has a hollow note head, then two black heads joined by a beam, and your counting hand stalls. Note values tell you how many beats each shape is worth, and the same shape is worth a different number of beats in 4/4 than it is in 6/8. The shapes form a fixed chain of halves; the beat they land on comes from the time signature at the front of the staff.

Why a note value is a ratio, not a fixed number of beats

A note value is a fraction of a whole note, not a duration in seconds and not a beat count printed on the page. A whole note is twice a half note, a half note twice a quarter note, a quarter note twice an eighth note, and an eighth note twice a sixteenth note. Michigan Tech's notation primer states the chain plainly: a whole note is as long as two half notes, and a half note is as long as two quarter notes.

That chain never changes. What changes is where it touches the floor, and the time signature decides that. In the University of Puget Sound's theory text, the top number of the time signature tells you "how many" and the bottom number tells you "of what".

So the bottom number names the note that counts as one beat: in 4/4 it is the quarter, which makes a whole note four beats and an eighth note half a beat.

What the bottom number of the time signature decides

The bottom number of a simple time signature points at one note value and calls it the beat. A 4 means the quarter note, an 8 means the eighth note, and a 2 means the half note. Reprint the same bar of music in 2/2 instead of 4/4 and every shape keeps its ratio while the beat count halves: the whole note now fills two beats.

Compound meters read the bottom number one step further down. The same text notes that with compound meters the bottom number specifies the division of the beat, and the beat value is a dotted note. In 6/8 the eighth note is one of the six counts, and the pulse you feel and conduct is the dotted quarter, three eighths long.

The note values from whole to sixteenth, with their rests

Five note values cover almost everything an adult learner reads: whole, half, quarter, eighth and sixteenth. Each is half the length of the one above, so a whole note takes up a whole measure in 4/4, a half note takes up half a measure, and a quarter note takes up 1/4 of a measure. British usage names the same five shapes semibreve, minim, crotchet, quaver and semiquaver.

Every note value has a rest of exactly the same length.

On the page	US name	British name	Matching rest	Beats in 4/4
Hollow head, no stem	Whole note	Semibreve	Whole rest	4
Hollow head, stem	Half note	Minim	Half rest	2
Filled head, stem	Quarter note	Crotchet	Quarter rest	1
Filled head, stem, one flag	Eighth note	Quaver	Eighth rest	1/2
Filled head, stem, two flags	Sixteenth note	Semiquaver	Sixteenth rest	1/4

The last column is 4/4 only; the first four columns hold everywhere.

A five-row chart of note values: each row shows the note, its US name, its British name, the matching rest and the beats it gets in 4/4.

The two rests that look alike

The whole rest and the half rest are the same small black rectangle, told apart by where they sit. The whole rest hangs below the fourth line of the staff. The half rest sits on top of the third line.

The whole rest carries a second meaning. A whole rest placed at the middle of the measure marks an entire bar of silence, regardless of the actual time signature. A whole rest in 3/4 therefore means three beats of silence.

How to work out any note's value, step by step

Working out a value takes five questions asked in a fixed order.

Read the bottom number of the time signature. Look at the lower digit only. It names a note value, and nothing about the beat is settled until you have read it.
Find the beat note. Translate that digit into a shape: 4 is the quarter note, 8 the eighth note, 2 the half note. In a compound meter such as 6/8 or 12/8, group the printed eighths in threes and treat the dotted quarter as the pulse.
Halve or double from the beat note. Count the steps between your note and the beat note. Each step up doubles the value and each step down halves it, so from a quarter-note beat a half note is 2 and a sixteenth note is 0.25.
Apply the dot. Add half of the value to itself for one dot. A dotted half note in 4/4 is 2 plus 1, which is 3 beats.
Add the tied notes. A tie makes two written notes into one sound, so add the values across the tie. A half note tied to a quarter note lasts 3 beats in 4/4, the same length as a dotted half note.

Free toolMetronomePractise with a steady beat

The step people get wrong

Step 1 fails most often because readers treat the bottom number as a beat count. The 8 in 6/8 names the eighth note as the unit being counted, and the 6 says there are six of them per bar.

The second slip is reading a shape as a duration in seconds. A quarter note has no fixed length; tempo supplies it, so at 60 beats per minute a quarter note lasts one second and at 120 it lasts half a second.

Dots, ties and triplets

Dots, ties and triplets are the three devices that stop a printed shape from being worth its plain value.

The Puget Sound text says that a dot added to a note increases the duration of that note by half, and a second dot represents half the value of the first dot, or a quarter of the original duration. In 4/4 that makes a dotted half note 3 beats, a dotted quarter note 1.5 beats, and a double-dotted half note 3.5 beats.

A tie joins two notes of the same pitch into one sound of their combined length. A slur looks similar and does something else: it covers notes of different pitches and asks you to play them in a connected manner.

Triplets bend the halving system sideways. An eighth-note triplet puts three eighth notes inside the span normally filled by the quarter note, which is to say three notes in the time of two. Count it as "tri-pl-et" across one beat rather than giving each note a fraction.

Why a dotted half note is three beats in 4/4 but a dotted quarter is the beat in 6/8

The dotted half note and the dotted quarter note behave differently because the beat note underneath them differs. In 4/4 the quarter note is the beat, a half note is two beats, and the dot adds one more, giving 3 of the bar's 4 beats.

In 6/8 the eighth note is the printed count and the dotted quarter is the felt pulse. A dotted quarter equals three eighths, so two of them fill a 6/8 bar. That is also why a dotted quarter note reads as 1.5 beats in 4/4 and as one whole beat in 6/8, a difference worked through in the post on dotted quarters versus eighth notes.

How to count note values against a steady pulse

Counting turns a value on the page into a length you can hear, and it needs an outside pulse. Set a metronome to the beat note from step 2, then speak the subdivision out loud while you play.

The standard subdivision syllables for 4/4 are "1 e and a, 2 e and a", one syllable per sixteenth note. A quarter note holds through all four syllables of its beat, an eighth note holds two, and a sixteenth note gets one. The full system is laid out in the guide to counting rhythms with 1 e and a.

Three worked examples in 4/4: a dotted half note is 3 beats, a half note tied to a quarter is 3 beats, and a dotted quarter plus an eighth is 2 beats.

A check that fits in one bar

Four checks will tell you whether a bar's values add up before you play it.

Bar total: do the values in the bar add up to the top number of the time signature? In 4/4 they must total 4 quarter-note beats, dots and ties included.
Ties across the barline: did you add the tied value into the next bar's total rather than counting it twice?
Beam groups: do the beamed eighths and sixteenths group into whole beats? Notation normally beams within a beat.
Rest lengths: is each rest the same length as the note it mirrors? A half rest in a 4/4 bar leaves two beats to fill.

Run the four checks slowly on paper first. Rhythm drills against a clock, such as the rhythm exercises, move the same four checks into real time.

Common mistakes with note values and rests

Most note-value errors come from treating the system as a list of durations to memorize rather than a ratio to compute.

Mistake: memorizing "a whole note is four beats" as a rule. The rule holds only when the quarter note gets the beat. Derive the beat count from the bottom number each time.
Mistake: reading 6/8 as six beats. The bar has six eighth-note counts and two felt beats.
Mistake: giving a dot a fixed value. A dot adds half of the note it follows, so in 4/4 it is worth 1 beat after a half note and 0.5 after a quarter note.
Mistake: playing a tie as two separate notes. A tie is one sound, held across both written values.
Mistake: treating a slur as a tie. A slur connects different pitches and changes articulation, and it never adds durations together.
Mistake: squeezing a triplet into the wrong space. Three eighth notes in a triplet fill one quarter-note beat, and each one is shorter than a plain eighth note.

The edge case: a half rest in 3/4

A 3/4 bar of silence takes a whole rest, which looks wrong to anyone who has learned that a whole rest means four beats. The convention outranks the arithmetic, and the whole rest is the symbol for a silent bar in any meter.

A half rest in 3/4 leaves one beat unaccounted for, so it would need a quarter rest beside it. The reasoning is worked through in the post on half rests in 3/4 time.

Your note-value checklist and next steps

Five items are worth checking before you call a rhythm read.

The chain: you can recite whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth and say each is half the one above.
The beat note: you read the bottom number first and name the note that gets the beat.
The rests: you name every rest shape and place the whole rest below the fourth line and the half rest on the third.
The dot: you add half the value again, and half of that again for a second dot.
The pulse: you can count a bar out loud against a metronome without the values drifting.

When the values are secure, the next thing to read is pitch, and the note names on both staves are covered in the guide to treble and bass clef notes. Keep the music theory cheat sheet open while you work, and drill the shapes in short scored rounds so the counting becomes automatic.