Durations and rests

Choose how long each note lasts, dot it or tie it, and leave rests where nothing plays.

Available on iPad, iPhone and Mac.

Your device

Writing tab on iPad, the Rhythm tools open above the categories, the eighth note chosen for the beat at the cursor. — The Rhythm tools, an eighth note chosen.

On this page

The Rhythm tools
Changing a duration
Dots and ties
Rests

Every beat has a duration, a whole note down to a sixty-fourth. The notes of a beat share it, and the next note you type takes the duration you chose last.

The Rhythm tools

In Edit, Rhythm is the first of the tools’ categories. Its buttons, left to right:

I, II, III and IV: the voice you write in (see Voices and stems).
The note values: whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth and thirty-second. The one lit is the beat’s.
Dotted and Double Dotted: a dot adds half the note’s length, two dots three quarters.
Tie: ties the note at the cursor to the one before it on the same string, so it lasts on instead of being played again.

On iPhone the categories are icons; tap the notes’ icon and the Rhythm buttons open in a row above it, its name at the start. On the Mac, each is also in the Note menu: Voice, Duration, Dotted Note, Double Dotted Note and Tied Note.

Changing a duration

Choose a note value with the cursor on a beat, and that beat takes it; with beats selected, all of them do. The value stays chosen: the notes you type on empty beats after it are that long, until you choose another.

On the keypad, − makes the beat at the cursor shorter (a quarter becomes an eighth) and + longer (a quarter becomes a half); . dots it.

− makes the beat at the cursor shorter and + longer; , dots it. With the Select tool, the keys 1 to 7 choose the duration for the next notes, a whole note to a sixty-fourth.

Dots and ties

Dotted and Double Dotted work like the values: on the beat at the cursor, or on the beats selected; choose the lit one again to take the dot off. The key is ,, and T ties.

A tie joins a note to the one before it on the same string: on the staff it is drawn as a tie, and Reflow plays them as one long note. Use it for a note that rings across a barline, or for a length no single value has.

Rests

A beat with no note is a rest, and Reflow draws the rest of its duration on the staff.

To leave a rest, write the next note further on: move the cursor over the beats where nothing plays, or add an empty beat with Add Beat in Beat (see Beats) and give it its duration.
To turn a note into a rest, delete it: ⌫ on the keypad⌫ takes the note at the cursor away, and with the beat’s last note gone the beat is a rest.
Deleting again, on the rest, takes the beat itself away.