An eighth note is a filled note head with a stem and one flag, and it lasts half a beat in common time. Two of them fill one quarter-note beat.
When several appear together their flags are joined into a beam, which is easier to read and tells you at a glance how they group. A beam is not a different note value; it is the same eighth notes tidied up.
How to spot it
A filled note with a single flag, or joined to its neighbors by one thick beam.
Find it in thirty seconds
Find a beamed group of eighth notes and count "one-and two-and" through it. Say the "and" out loud, the off-beat is where evenness is won or lost.
Open any piece of sheet music on this site and do it now. Reading is a recognition skill, and recognition is built by finding things, not by reading about them.
Related Topics...
How to Read Sheet Music: Learn how to read sheet music using interactive lessons from Chordzy. Or browse our various reading music topics.
Music Notation Glossary: Every symbol on a page of piano music, explained in one sentence each, clefs, note values, rests, accidentals, dynamics and repeat marks.
Eighth Rest: Eighth Rest in piano music. An eighth rest is a small slanted stroke with a single flag, meaning half a beat of silence.
Quarter Note: A quarter note on the piano staff: how to spot the filled head, and a thirty-second hunt for one on a real page.
Sixteenth Note: Sixteenth Note in piano music. A sixteenth note has two flags (or two beams) and lasts a quarter of a beat in common time. Four of them fit into one quarter-no…
Triplet: Triplet in piano music. A triplet is three notes played in the time of two of the same value, marked with a small 3 above or below the group.
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Fermata: Fermata in piano music. A fermata, the dot under an arc, sometimes called a bird's eye, means hold the note or rest longer than its written value, for as long…
