Note flag

What it means

The flag is the curved appendage at the end of the note stem. It halves the value of the note: one flag turns a quarter note into an eighth, two flags give a sixteenth, three a thirty-second, and so on. The counting is thus consistently regular — every additional flag means one more halving. Notes from the quarter note upward carry no flags.

In the notation

The flag always sits at the free end of the stem and always points to the right, regardless of whether the stem points up or down. Several flags stand one above another. When flagged notes stand next to one another, they are usually beamed into a bundle, with the number of beams corresponding to the number of flags; this changes nothing about the duration. Whether notes are beamed or written singly depends on the beat and, in vocal music, on the text underlay. Rests have their own signs with a corresponding number of hooks.

Musical use

In practice the flag is the carrier of rhythmic information at the small scale. When reading, the number of flags or beams serves as quick information about the speed of a passage: a glance at the density of the beams says more about the character of a passage than counting individual notes. Singly flagged notes appear above all where a note stands alone on a beat or where the text underlay excludes beaming.

From the eighth note on, every shorter note carries flags: the eighth one, the sixteenth two, the thirty-second three. When several such notes stand next to one another, the flags are usually replaced by beams.

Performance practice

Count the flags deliberately before playing an unfamiliar passage — confusing one and two flags is one of the most common reading errors and changes the rhythm by a factor of two. With beamed groups, watch for places where an additional beam runs only over part of the group; there the value changes within the bundle. Practise difficult rhythms first in the smallest occurring unit.