Rest (music)

A rest is an interval of silence in a piece of music, marked by a symbol indicating the length of the pause. Each rest symbol and name corresponds with a particular note value for length, indicating how long the silence should last. A rest is an interval of silence in a piece of music, marked by a symbol indicating the length of the pause. Each rest symbol and name corresponds with a particular note value for length, indicating how long the silence should last. Rests are intervals of silence in pieces of music, marked by symbols indicating the length of the pause. Each rest symbol and name corresponds with a particular note value, indicating how long the silence should last, generally as a multiplier of a measure or whole note. When an entire bar is devoid of notes, a whole (semibreve) rest is used, regardless of the actual time signature. The only exceptions are for a 42 time signature (four half notes per bar), when a double whole rest is typically used for a bar's rest, and for time signatures shorter than 316, when a rest of the actual measure length would be used. For a 42 bar rest, it is also common to use the whole rest instead of the double whole rest, so that a whole-bar rest for all time signatures starting from 316 is notated using a whole note rest. Some published (usually earlier) music places the numeral '1' above the rest to confirm the extent of the rest. Occasionally in manuscript autographs and facsimiles, bars without notes are sometimes left completely empty, possibly even without the staves. In instrumental parts, rests of more than one bar in the same meter and key may be indicated with a multimeasure rest (British English: multiple bar rest), showing the number of bars of rest, as shown. Multimeasure rests of are usually drawn in one of two ways: