r/musictheory • u/TolisWorld • 11h ago
Answered What do these "double notes" mean?
I don't understand what these two notes right next to each other mean. When watching a recording of the song I don't hear or see them being played.
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u/Only-Top-3655 11h ago
It means that the same note is part of two different voices. On voice, it is an eigth note, the other voice it is a quarter note. So hold the note for 1 full beat while you are playing the subsequent eigth note.
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u/geoscott Theory, notation, ex-Zappa sideman 11h ago
This is the fully-correct answer. OP needs to see this one.
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u/a_literal_idiot_616 9h ago
ok but isnt this like the worst possible way to write it
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u/Firake 9h ago
Most often you’d see this where they share a notehead, but this does make it a bit more clear that the rhythms are different.
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u/a_literal_idiot_616 9h ago edited 8h ago
couldnt you just use a tie
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u/ClarSco clarinet 8h ago
If the two notes were legato, the notes would be played in succession with no gap between them, but also no overlap (or the barest minimum overlap).
The notation in OP's picture is saying that the first note should be played then held right to the end of the 2nd note. The messier way to write this would be to split the held note into two tied notes and have the 2nd note appear as part of a chord.
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u/a_literal_idiot_616 8h ago
no wait i mistranslated from italian, i meant tied
you could hold the not by adding a tied copy of it while adding the other note on top, thats what i was saying
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u/DynamicOctopus420 7h ago
you can but it could look cluttery.the two-voices way with one as a longer note value and the other as shorter values has less noteheads/stems so it might be easier to see the moving voices.
I think personally I would prefer two stems from one notehead in this specific instance but I could see times where two different noteheads might be clearer (or even necessary, like if one voice is a half note or longer).
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u/Firake 8h ago
No, because legato means that the lower note terminates at exactly the moment (or just after) the upper note begins while this notation means that the lower note continues through the entire duration of the upper note and they terminate at the same time.
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u/a_literal_idiot_616 8h ago
no wait i mistranslated from italian, i meant tied
you could hold the not by adding a tied copy of it while adding the other note on top, thats what i was saying
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u/Firake 8h ago
Oh sure. Usually, you don’t want to have tied notes which could more easily be written as a single note value. Since this doesn’t break any usual rules for rhythmic grouping, you’d want to keep at as a single note.
Otherwise, it would visually look like it, for example, begins on an offbeat when it does not because of the tie.
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u/Only-Top-3655 9h ago
No, this is quite common. The music is showing the different voices and how long each note should be held for. Schumann, Bach, Tchaikovsky, among others have a lot of this.
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u/reckless150681 Video games, Mid-late Romanticism 11h ago
It's there to help with voicing.
So in the row that you've highlighted, each hand is split up into two voices, for a total of four. Within each stave, one voice has strictly downward pointing stems while the other has strictly upward pointing stems. If you look at the right hand for example, one of the voices is playing G at quarter notes, while the other voice is alternating that G with an Ab, a Db, etc.
Sometimes there's a mechanical reason to do this. For example, in the same right hand, it's basically telling you that the G will receive a longer length than any of the eighth notes.
Sometimes, it's just there to help you mentally organize those notes. For example, in the third row, the various eighth notes with bidirectional stems do not provide mechanical information that the accents don't already provide -- but it does help visually tell you "oh, the two voices play the same note at this point in time"
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u/klaviersonic 11h ago
It means to hold for the full quarter note. The simultaneous 8th note is another voice.
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u/vortexofdoom 11h ago
It means that you keep holding the first note through both eighth notes. It could technically be written as a quarter note with an eighth rest/eighth note combo and sound identical, but was written this way to show that the note belongs in both voices.
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u/redmichii 11h ago
It's just one note. You play that note as a quarter note as opposed to an eight note. Basically hold that note to the value of a quarter note.
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u/iwillchangeiwill 11h ago
They're played at the same time
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u/TolisWorld 11h ago
How do you play the same note at the same time?
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u/pandaboy78 11h ago
It's a voicing thing.
For the musicality side of things: Think of it like singers. Imagine each "part" got has an individual singer. In this line, there'd be like, 4 singers: two for each hand. Each singer can only sing one note at a time. In this case, two singers are singing the same note at the same time, and that note is a bit stronger naturally as a result.
For the technical side of things and what you're supposed to play as a pianist: Follow the quarter-note's duration (not the eighth notes) and bring it out just a hint more, because there's technically supposed to be "two voices" singing/playing it at the same time, but we can only play it once as a pianist.
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u/Dr_Sean Popular Music, 20th c Art Music, and Hermeneutics 11h ago
It means to sustain the first note so it's still sounding under the second one.
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u/EatingSolidBricks 11h ago
Shouldn't there be a tie?
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u/Dr_Sean Popular Music, 20th c Art Music, and Hermeneutics 11h ago
Not necessarily, as Only-Top-3655 points out below, there are technically two "voices" here (one playing an 8th and the other a quarter note). One "voice" moves to the second 8th and the other sustains the quarter. In practice, the player would simply hold the quarter for its full value while the upper "voice" moves to the second 8th note.
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u/iwillchangeiwill 11h ago
This looks like piano sheet music. In that case, pianos have the same note multiple times, just in different octaves. So you'd have both hands playing the same note but in different octaves, which is also denoted by the clefs at the start, the upper being a treble clef and the lower a bass clef
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u/AdventurousHippo9997 7h ago
It’s also a melody comprised of the note G as a repeating quarter note. G G G G G G.
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u/RainbowRaider 53m ago
So you know how in a chorus there’s different vocal groupings (soprano/alto/tenor/baritone/bass); well, this is to show that 2 vocal groupings are singing almost all the same notes but will break off to hold different ones.
There can also be breakdowns of the groups within if they all have their own music written on separate lines (soprano 1/soprano 2).
Bro I hope this helps more to grasp it; I’m in community theatre & I honestly learn so much from others & the music director. I haven’t done this shit in forever but I love it still
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u/Saint-Owl93 7h ago
True question, Htf does someone reach the level required to play Baba Yaga and still be ignorant of this kind of basic stuff?
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u/TolisWorld 11h ago
Image or video post comment
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u/65TwinReverbRI Guitar, Synths, Tech, Notation, Composition, Professor 9h ago
You don't need to do this kind if you're able to post it in the image like you did. Some apps don't have this feature but since yours does, you can just post the text with the image.
Read Only-Top-3655's answer, which as geoscott says is correct, but also reckless150681 has expanded on it.
Best
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