"Quaver" redirects here. For the cheese-flavored snack food, see Quavers.
Figure 1. An eighths note with stem facing up, an eighth note with stem facing down, and an eighth rest.
Figure 2. Four eighth notes linked together.
An eighth note (American or "German" terminology) or a quaver (British or Western classical terminology) is a musicalnote played for one eighth the duration of a whole note, hence the name.
Eighth notes are notated with an oval, filled-in note head and a straight note stem with one flag. (see Figure 1). A related symbol is the "eighth rest" (or "quaver rest"), which denotes a silence for the same duration.
In Unicode, the symbols U+266A (♪) and U+266B (♫) are a quaver and beamed pair of quavers respectively. The characters are inherited from the early-1980s code page 437, where they have codes 13 and 14 respectively.
As with all notes with stems, the general rule is that eighth notes are drawn with stems to the right of the notehead, facing up, when they are below the middle line of the musical staff. When they are on or above the middle line, they are drawn with stems on the left of the note head, facing down.
Flags are always on the right side of the stem, and curve to the right. On stems facing up, the flag starts at the top and curves down; for downward facing stems, the flags start at the bottom of the stem and curve up. When multiple eighth notes or sixteenth notes (or thirty-second notes, etc.) are next to each other, the stems may be connected with a beam rather than a flag, like the notes in Figure 2.
The word quaver comes from the now archaic use of the verb to quaver meaning to sing in trills. The term eighth note is a translation of German Achtelnote.
The names of this note (and rest) in European languages vary greatly:
Language
note name
rest name
German
Achtelnote
Achtelpause
French
croche
demi-soupir
Italian
croma
pausa di croma
Spanish
corchea
silencio de corchea
Portuguese
colcheia
pausa de colcheia
The French name, croche is from the same source as crotchet, the British name for the quarter note. The name derives from crochata ("hooked"), to apply to the flags of the semiminima (in white notation) and fusa (in black notation) in mensural notation; thus the name came to be used for different notes.
