Dotted notes
Five cases, each one twice to hear: first the note without a dot, then the same note with one — and the bar stays exactly as long.
A dot after the notehead is the thriftiest sign in all of notation. It says: and half as much again. A half note becomes three quarters, a quarter becomes three eighths, an eighth becomes three sixteenths.
That is not a fixed addition but a ratio: how much the dot adds depends on how long the note would be without it. So every case on this page stands twice — once plain, once dotted — and both times the note sits at the same pitch. Duration is the only audible difference. The bar stays exactly as long as before; what the dot gives the note, it takes from the rests behind it.
Dotted half note
Two quarters become three. In 3/4 it fills the whole bar and is the normal case there — a single note lying across all three beats. In 4/4 exactly one quarter is left behind it, and out of that comes one of the commonest bar shapes there is.
Dotted quarter note
Two eighths become three. This is the dot you see most often: together with an eighth behind it, it fills two beats and gives the long-short pattern that every march and every other ballad has. Play it evenly and the walk turns into a stroll.
Dotted eighth note
Two sixteenths become three. The same division one level down, and the short note behind it becomes very short — so short that the difference from a triplet blurs unless you listen closely. In print the two are plainly different; in performance, often less so.
Double-dotted note
A second dot adds half of the first again, that is a quarter of the original value. Together they make seven eighths of the note you started with: almost all of it, but not quite. The scraps behind it become correspondingly tiny, and that is exactly where the bite of a baroque overture comes from.
Dotted rest
The dot works on rests just as it does on notes — you simply do not hear it, you notice it in the waiting. In the picture the notes left and right are the same; all that has moved is when the second one arrives. Older editions avoided the dotted rest and wrote two rests instead; today it is everywhere.
The dotted rhythm
First eight even eighths, then the same bar dotted
The commonest use is not a single long note at all but a pair: a dotted note with a short one behind it, over and over. Long–short, long–short. Both rows in the picture last exactly as long and carry the same pulse — one divides it evenly, the other three to one.
This pattern carries half of music history: the French overture lives on it, so does the march and a good deal of what counts as "straight" in pop. Play it evenly and you are playing something else — and anyone listening notices at once, even without being able to name it.
Where the dot is the rule
Six eighths, then the same span as two dotted quarters
In compound metres the dotted note is not an exception but the beat itself. In 6/8 you do not count six eighths but two beats of three each — and one beat is exactly a dotted quarter. The picture shows both in turn: first the six eighths, then the two beats that gather them up.
That is why such bars are full of dots without anything special being meant. And it is why the duplet is needed there whenever two are to be played instead of three.
Which note values there are
The dot alters a note value, it does not replace one. Which values exist — whole, half, quarter and eighth notes and their rests — is with the Note values. Which metre is counted how, and why 6/8 counts differently from 3/4, is with the Time signatures.
Music symbols · Note values · Music notation glossary
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