Double-Dotted Note

A second dot after a note adds half of what the first dot added. So a double-dotted note lasts its own value, plus half of it, plus a quarter of it:

• double-dotted half note = half + quarter + eighth = 3½ beats in 4/4
• double-dotted quarter note = quarter + eighth + sixteenth = 1¾ beats in 4/4
• double-dotted eighth note = eighth + sixteenth + thirty-second = ⅞ of a beat in 4/4

A double dot is a neat way to write a long note that leaves only a small gap before the next beat.

The short note that follows

A double-dotted note is nearly always followed by one short note that completes the beat or the bar:

• double-dotted quarter + sixteenth = 2 beats
• double-dotted half + eighth = 4 beats (a full bar of 4/4)
• double-dotted eighth + thirty-second = 1 beat

The result is a sharper, more snapped long-short rhythm than a single dot gives. With one dot, a quarter note's partner is an eighth note; with two dots it shrinks to a sixteenth and arrives later.

▶Single dot0:06▶Double dot0:06▶Double-dotted half + eighth0:07

Counting double dots

Count in sixteenths. A double-dotted quarter on beat 1 lasts "1 e & a 2 e &", and its sixteenth falls on the "a" of beat 2. Say every syllable at first, then only the ones where notes start. The Double Dot worksheet practices exactly this, and The Dotted Eighth + Sixteenth is a good warm-up.

Where you meet them

Double dots turn up in slow, stately music and in Baroque pieces in the French overture style, with their sharp dotted rhythms. Performers and historians have long discussed whether Baroque players sometimes played single-dotted rhythms as if they were double-dotted, a practice called overdotting. How widely it applied is still debated, so editions and teachers differ.

Triple dots also exist, each dot adding half of the one before, but they are rare.