Two hundred fifty-sixth note
{{short description|Musical note duration}}
File:Mozart 256th notes.png used 128th and 256th notes in his Variations on "Je suis Lindor", K. 354. {{audio|Mozart 256th notes.mid|Play}} at {{music|eighth}}=40 ({{music|quarter}}=20)]]
In music, a two hundred fifty-sixth note, or occasionally demisemihemidemisemiquaver (British),{{Cite web|url=https://csee.essex.ac.uk/camerata/unlp_asooja_long_14.pdf|title=UNLP at the C@merata Task: Question Answering on Musical Scores ACM|last1=Assoja|first1=Kartik|last2=Ernala|first2=Sindhu|last3=Buitelaar|first3=Paul|date=16–17 October 2014|website=University of Essex|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=1 April 2020}} is a note played for {{frac|256}} of the duration of a whole note. It lasts half as long as a hundred twenty-eighth note and takes up one quarter of the length of a sixty-fourth note. In musical notation it has a total of six flags or beams. Since human pitch perception begins at 20 Hz (1200/minute), then a 256th-note tremolo becomes a single pitch in perception at quarter note ≈ 18.75 bpm.{{OR|date=July 2024}}
A single 256th note is always stemmed with flags, while two or more are usually beamed in groups.Gerou, Tom (1996). Essential Dictionary of Music Notation, p.211. Alfred. {{ISBN|0-88284-730-9}} Notes this short are very rare in printed music, but not unknown. They are principally used for brief, rapid sections in slow movements. For example, they occur in some editions of the second movement (Largo) of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto (Op. 37) (1800), to notate rapid scales.{{Cite web |title=Extremes of Conventional Music Notation |url=http://homes.sice.indiana.edu/donbyrd/CMNExtremes.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220610200930/https://homes.luddy.indiana.edu/donbyrd/CMNExtremes.htm |archive-date=10 June 2022 |access-date=2020-04-01 |website=homes.sice.indiana.edu}} Another example is in Mozart's Variations on "Je suis Lindor" (1778), where four of them are used in the slow (molto adagio) eleventh variation.Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Zwölf Variationen in Es über die Romanze "Je suis Lindor"
File:Semigarrapatea.svg|256th note
File:Silencio de semigarrapatea.svg|256th rest
Even shorter notes
File:Heinrich 1024th notes.png
{{clear}}
The next note value shorter than the two hundred fifty-sixth note is the five hundred twelfth note with seven flags or beams; it is half as long as the two hundred fifty-sixth note. After this would come the thousand twenty-fourth note (eight flags or beams), the two thousand forty-eighth note (nine flags or beams), the four thousand ninety-sixth note (ten flags or beams), and so on indefinitely, with each note half the length of its predecessor. Anthony Philip Heinrich's Toccata Grande Cromatica from The Sylviad, Set 2, written around 1825, contains two 1024th notes (notated incorrectly as 2048ths). 256th notes occur frequently in this piece, and some 512th notes also appear; the passage is marked grave but the composer also intended a huge ritardando. Also, in the fourth and final movement of Charles Ives' Concord Sonata, two 64th notes are incorrectly written as 1024th.{{cite web | url=https://homes.luddy.indiana.edu/donbyrd/CMNExtremes.htm | title=Extremes of Conventional Music Notation }}
Brian Ferneyhough uses many note and rest values well smaller than a 256th note and rest in his works Quirl (2011–2013) and Inconjunctions (2014). In Inconjunctions, in addition to occasional 512th and 1024th rests, there are multiple examples of 4096th notes. Many of these are also contained within tuplets, making their ratio to the whole note even smaller.{{Cite web|url=https://issuu.com/editionpeters/docs/ep72630_ferneyhough_inconjunctions_|title=Ferneyhough - Inconjunctions Full Score EP72630|website=Issuu|date=20 October 2014 |language=en|access-date=2020-04-01}}
=Software=
Sibelius supports 512th notes (with 7 beams) as of version 7. MuseScore supports up to a 1024th note (with 8 beams), which is also the shortest duration in the SMuFL standard.{{Cite web|title=Note input|url=https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/note-input|access-date=2021-07-18|website=MuseScore.org|language=en}}{{Cite web|date=2014-06-02|title=Browse the glyphs|url=https://www.smufl.org/version/|access-date=2021-07-18|website=SMuFL|language=en-US}} The shortest duration supported by Finale is a 4096th note (with 10 beams),{{cite web|url=http://www.finalemusic.com/usermanuals/finale2012win/content/finale/STSBBDLG.htm|title=Secondary Beam Break Selection|work=finalemusic.com|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304030444/http://www.finalemusic.com/usermanuals/finale2012win/content/finale/STSBBDLG.htm|archivedate=2016-03-04}} while LilyPond can write notes as short as a 1073741824th (2−30) note with up to 28 beams.{{Cite web|url=https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2015-09/msg00213.html|title=Minimum possible duration|website=lists.gnu.org|first=Simon|last=Albrecht|access-date=2020-04-01}}