Hemisemidemiquaver is the gloriously unwieldy British music term for a sixty-fourth note — a note value so short it's almost theoretical in practical performance. Each prefix halves the previous duration: a quaver is an eighth note, a semiquaver a sixteenth, a demisemiquaver a thirty-second, and a hemi-semidemiquaver a sixty-fourth. The word itself is a gift to anyone who loves the absurdist side of music theory or wants to win an argument about the longest word in music.
The composer marked a passage with hemisemidemiquaver runs that the orchestra's woodwind section politely refused to sight-read.
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(UK, music) A sixty-fourth note.
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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