An eighth note or a quaver (other English-speaking countries) is a music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

al note

Note

In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....

 played for one eighth the duration of a whole note

Whole note

thumb|right|250px|Figure 1. A whole note and a whole rest.In music, a whole note or semibreve is a note represented by a hollow oval note head, like a half note , and no note stem . Its length is equal to four beats in 4/4 time...

, hence the name.

Eighth notes are notated with an oval, filled-in note head

Note head

In music, a note head is the elliptical part of a note. Noteheads may be coloured completely black or white, indicating the note value . In a whole note, the note head is the only component of the note. Shorter note values attach a stem to the note head, and possibly beams or flags...

 and a straight note stem with one flag. (see Figure 1). A related symbol is the eighth rest

Rest (music)

A rest is an interval of silence in a piece of music, marked by a sign indicating the length of the pause. Each rest symbol corresponds with a particular note value:The quarter rest may also be found as a form in older music....

 (or quaver rest), which denotes a silence for the same duration.

In Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

, the symbols U+266A and U+266B are an eighth note and beamed pair of eighth notes respectively. The characters are inherited from the early 1980s code page 437

Code page 437

IBM PC or MS-DOS code page 437 is the character set of the original IBM PC. It is also known as CP 437, OEM 437, PC-8, MS-DOS Latin US or sometimes misleadingly referred to as the OEM font, High ASCII or Extended ASCII....

, 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. Alternatively, stems are used to indicate voicing or parts; all stems for the upper voice's notes (or "part") are drawn facing up, regardless of their position on the staff. Similarly, stems for the next lower part's notes are down facing down. This makes the voices/parts clear to the player and singer.

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 note

Sixteenth note

thumb|right|Figure 1. A sixteenth note with stem facing up, a sixteenth note with stem facing down, and a sixteenth rest.thumb|right|Figure 2. Four sixteenth notes beamed together....

s (or thirty-second note

Thirty-second note

In music, a thirty-second note or demisemiquaver is a note played for 1/32 of the duration of a whole note...

s, etc.) are next to each other, the stems may be connected with a beam

Beam (music)

A beam in musical notation is a thick line frequently used to connect multiple consecutive eighth notes , or notes of shorter value , and occasionally rests...

 rather than a flag, as shown in Figure 2.

Eighth notes in 3/8, 6/8, 9/8, and 12/8 are beamed 3 eighth notes at a time.

Etymology

The word quaver comes from the now archaic use of the verb to quaver meaning to sing in trills.

The note derives from the fusa of mensural notation

Mensural notation

Mensural notation is the musical notation system which was used in European music from the later part of the 13th century until about 1600."Mensural" refers to the ability of this system to notate complex rhythms with great exactness and flexibility...

; however, fusa is the modern Spanish and Portuguese name for the thirty-second note

Thirty-second note

In music, a thirty-second note or demisemiquaver is a note played for 1/32 of the duration of a whole note...

.

The names of this note (and rest) in European languages vary greatly:

Language	note name	rest name
Dutch	achtste noot	achtste rust
German	Achtelnote	Achtelpause
French	croche	demi-soupir
Italian	croma	pausa di croma
Spanish	corchea	silencio de corchea
Portuguese	colcheia	pausa de colcheia
Polish	ósemka	pauza ósemkowa
Russian	восьмая нота	восьмая пауза
Finnish	Kahdeksasosanuotti	Kahdeksasosatauko
Turkish	sekizlik nota	sekizlik es

The French name, croche is from the same source as crotchet, the British name for the quarter note

Quarter note

A quarter note or crotchet is a note played for one quarter of the duration of a whole note . Often people will say that a crotchet is one beat, however, this is not always correct, as the beat is indicated by the time signature of the music; a quarter note may or may not be the beat...

. 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

Mensural notation

Mensural notation is the musical notation system which was used in European music from the later part of the 13th century until about 1600."Mensural" refers to the ability of this system to notate complex rhythms with great exactness and flexibility...

; thus the name came to be used for different notes.

In popular culture

In the climactic ending of the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a 1977 science fiction film written and directed by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, and Cary Guffey...

, eighth and sixteenth notes are mentioned while trying to communicate with aliens using basic tonal vocabulary.