#Quarter rest software

Incidentally, Glorfindel's second example is generally considered to be wrong, because when a beat is divided into 3 parts, the second and third subdivisions should not be combined into one rest. The most permissive opinion is that you can write whatever you like, of course - and that is true, but don't expect other people to read it without getting the rhythm wrong. That rule usually makes it clear where the beats are in complicated rhythms. And similarly you can write a dotted 8th rest + 16th note (starting on a beat) but not a 16th note + dotted 8th rest. The second case should be quarter note, quarter rest, half rest. So in 4/4 time you can write a bar of music as a dotted half rest + quarter note, but not a quarter note + dotted half rest.

For time signatures with an even number of beats the situation where a dotted rest starts on a beat in the first half of a bar but extends into the second half is not allowed. Many music publishers followed that convention up to about 1900.Ī more mainstream opinion today would be that dotted rests can be used if they are at the start of a beat, or a subdivision of a beat for short rests. That may seem extreme, but it does have some practical common sense to support it, because with hand copied music and/or in poor lighting conditions, dotted rests can be hard to read. But you don't need to go around correcting their mistakes all the time, because some deity or other will probably have special punishments reserved for them in the afterlife :)Ī slightly less extreme position is that dotted rests can only be used for complete beats (or multiple beats) in compound time signatures like 6/8 or 9/8.

#Quarter rest software

So you can't use them anywhere! The fact that people write music using them (and computer music notation software permits them) just demonstrates that many people don't know (or don't care) what they are doing. The 'ultra-orthodox' view is that dotted rests are not even a thing.