In music, a quarter note (American or "German" terminology) or crotchet (British or "classical" terminology) is a note played for one quarter of the duration of a whole note (or semibreve). Quarter notes are notated with a filled-in oval note head and a straight, flagless stem. The stem usually points upwards if it is below the middle line of the stave or downwards if it is on or above the middle line. However, this may be changed if there is more than one part to differentiate between the parts. The head of the note also reverses its orientation in relation to the stem. (See image.) Allegory of Music on the Opéra Garnier Music is an art form that involves organised sounds and silence. ... Figure 1. ... The oval that is seen at the top or bottom of a note. ... Stems can refer to two things in music, relating to music notation and production. ... In musical notation, the staff or stave is a set of five horizontal lines on which note symbols are placed to indicate pitch and time. ... As a noun, a part is a section of a greater whole. ...

In Unicode, the symbol is U+2669 (♩). Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ...

A quarter note with stem facing up, a quarter note with stem facing down, and a quarter rest.

A related symbol is the quarter rest (or crotchet rest). It denotes a silence of the same duration as a quarter note. Some describe the quarter rest as a "z joined to a c." It also looks somewhat like the Japanese hiragana So (そ). Image File history File links Quarter_notes_and_rest. ... Image File history File links Quarter_notes_and_rest. ... A rest is an interval of silence in a piece of music, marked by a sign indicating the length of the pause. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji Hiragana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji; the Latin alphabet is also used in some cases. ... そ, in hiragana, or ソ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, which each represent one mora. ...

The note derives from the semiminima of mensural notation. The word crotchet comes from Old French crochet, meaning 'little hook', diminutive of croc, 'hook', because of the hook used on the note in black notation. However, because the hook appeared on the eighth note (or quaver) in the later white notation, the modern French term croche refers to an eighth note. The term quarter note is a loan translation of German Viertelnote. Menstrual notation is the musical notation system which was used from the later part of the 13th century until about 1600. ... Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories corresponding roughly to the northern half of modern France and parts of Belgium and Switzerland from around 1000 to 1300 A.D. It was known at the time as the langue doïl to distinguish it from the langue... Crochet Hooks Crochet (IPA: krəʊʃeɪ) is one of several processes of creating fabric from cord, yarn, thread or wire. ... Figure 1. ... Calque In linguistics, a calque ([kælk]) or loan translation (itself a calque of German Lehnübersetzung) consists of the borrowing of a phrase from one language into another, in the process of which individual words native to the borrowing language semantically match the individual words in the source language. ...

The names of this note (and rest) in European languages vary greatly:

The French and Spanish names for the note (both meaning "black") derive from the fact that the semiminima was the longest note to be colored in mensural white notation, which is true as well of the modern form.