128th note
A note value of one hundred and twenty-eighth of a whole note. It has a stem and five flags or beams. It is the shortest note value still usual in notation.
- Fraction of the whole note
- 1/128
- Number per quarter note
- 32
- Number per whole note
- 128
- Flags or beams
- 5
- Corresponding rest
- 128th rest
The note values form a series in which each value lasts half as long as the one before. The whole note falls into two half notes, the half note into two quarter notes and so on. If you continue this halving you reach, after the thirty-second note and the sixty-fourth note, the 128th note: it lasts as long as 1/128 of a whole note.
The halving ladder from the whole note to the 128th
Each value lasts half as long as the one before. With each halving a flag is added from the eighth note on. In the notation the values from the eighth note on hang on a shared beam here; whole, half and quarter notes carry neither flags nor beams. Because the short values follow one another directly, beams stand instead of flags, their number growing from one at the eighth note to five at the 128th. Written singly, each note carries its flags. The tempo of quarter note = 30 is deliberately slow, so that the short values stay audible.
What it looks like
The notehead is filled in like the quarter and eighth note. To it are added a stem and five flags; several consecutive notes are joined with five beams. The number of flags grows by one with each halving, so you can count the note values off them.
| Note value | Fraction of the whole note | Flags (single) | per quarter note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quarter note | 1/4 | 0 | 1 |
| Eighth note | 1/8 | 1 | 2 |
| Sixteenth note | 1/16 | 2 | 4 |
| Thirty-second note | 1/32 | 3 | 8 |
| Sixty-fourth note | 1/64 | 4 | 16 |
| 128th note | 1/128 | 5 | 32 |
How short is 1/128 really?
32 128th notes fit into a quarter note. At quarter note = 60 a beat lasts one second, so a 128th note about 31 milliseconds. That is so fast that you practically no longer hear it as a single note. That is why the value hardly occurs in practice. Where very fast runs are notated, you usually choose larger note values with a correspondingly faster metronome mark. The notation then stays clearer, and the sound stays the same.
Relation to the other values
Like every note value the 128th note can be lengthened with a dot. It then lasts one and a half times as long. In addition every note has a rest of equal length. What the 128th rest looks like is on the page 128th rest.
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Related terms
128th restThirty-second noteSixteenth noteEighth noteNote valueNote flagNote stem
Editor: Maik Krohm · reviewed on 3 October 2026
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