The half note, also called the minimum is another node value that is greater than one beat. Just like its name implies, it lasts for half the duration of a whole load, ie two beats. So it stands to reason that two half notes would have the same combined value of a whole mode. Notice that like the whole note, half note has a head, but it also has what we call a stem. The stem can point either down or up. If it points down, it sits on the left of the head, and if it points up, it sits on the right of the head.

Generally speaking notes which sit on the line that represents B and above have this stems pointing down, whereas notes below that have their stems pointing up. I'm sure that it goes without saying that you can have two half notes per bar and no more, since two half notes would make up a whole wall. Look at this example. We have a meter of four bits per bar, and the tempo is set to 70 beats per minute. We have a series of E notes, each of which has a half note value. And there are two half notes per bar.

Here's how you play it. Remember we will include a counting bar 1234 chord can also have a half note value. Look at this example, which is almost exactly the same as the previous one except that now we have a chord with the half node value, making up the first two beats of each bar. It's the same chord as before just the gbn e open strings. Let's play through it. 1234 To indicate silence for the value of a half note, use the half wrist, aka minimum wrist.

The half wrist looks almost exactly the same as the whole wrist but it's lying on top of the third line, instead of hanging off the fourth line. Here we have the same example from before, but with a half wrist at the beginning of bars two and four, indicating that there should be silence for the first two beats in each. Here's how you play it. 1234 Now we'll be writing out these examples in the next lesson, but be sure to go through this video again to check that you can play the examples we used.