half note

In music, a half note (American) or minim (British) is a note played for half the duration of a whole note (or semibreve) and twice the duration of a quarter note (or crotchet). It was given its Latin name (minim, meaning "least or smallest") because it was the shortest of the five note values used in early medieval music notation . In time signatures with a bar length of 4 beats, such as 4/4 or 3/4 time, the half note is two beats long.