Math and Music

This is a simple explanation of musical notes, their types and values.In standard notation, a single musical sound is written as a note. The two most important things a written piece of music needs to tell you about a note are its pitch and its duration, but we will mostly talk about their duration

The simplest-looking note, with no stems or flags, is a whole note. All other note lengths are defined by how long they last compared to a whole note.

A note that lasts half as long as a whole note is a half note. Half notes are notated with a hollow oval note head and a straight note stem with no flags.2 half notes make a whole note.

A quarter note is 1/4 of a whole note and is represented with a shaded in oval shown above with no flags.4 quarter notes make a whole note.

A eighth note is 1/8 of a whole note and has one flag.

A sixteenth note is 1/16 of a whole note meaning 16 16th notes make a whole note.This note has 2 flags


A thirty second note is 1/32 of a whole note.And has 3 flags.

And a sixty-fourth note is 1/64 of a whole note and so on....(there is also a 128th note)
On this staff, you can see how 1 whole note equals 2 half notes as 4 quarters equal 8 eighth notes.

This picture also shows how all notes can be related to a whole note as fractions.
(Other things i did not go into are dotted notes,notes with out heads,notes with slashes, and many more)
So over all this was made to show how fractions are used in music.