Eighth rest

What it means

The eighth rest denotes a silence of the duration of an eighth note. Rests are not empty spaces but measured time: they belong to the bar just as the notes do and are counted just as exactly.

In the series of rests the eighth rest stands between the quarter rest and the sixteenth rest. As with the note values, each step halves the duration, and as there, the actual length depends on the tempo.

In the notation

The sign consists of a small oblique stroke with a flag pointing to the left, and stands in the middle of the staff. The sixteenth rest has two such flags, the thirty-second rest three. Unlike stems, the rest does not follow the voice leading; only in staves with several voices is it displaced up or down to separate the voices.

Rests are notated so that the beats remain visible: instead of one long rest across a beat boundary, several shorter ones stand, each filling one beat. A dotted eighth rest lengthens the value by half.

Musical use

Short rests articulate the music. They set motifs off from one another, give entries emphasis and create tension where the listener expects a note. In dance-like and march-like music the eighth rest on an accented beat contributes to the characteristic sharpness, because the note enters only after it. In vocal music it serves the breath without interrupting the phrase.

Its sign resembles a small figure seven with a dot at the upper end. Dotted, it lasts three sixteenths.

Performance practice

Count rests along just as you do notes — the most common inaccuracy is a rest taken too short. Prepare the entry after the rest during its duration, instead of reacting at the last moment. For wind players and singers an eighth rest is often the only chance to breathe; plan it in deliberately, without lengthening it. And see that the preceding note really ends: a rest into which the sound protrudes is none.