Ghost note

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Ghost notes are musical notes occurring in a rhythmic figure which are purposely deemphasized, often nearly to the point of silence.

A rhythmic figure may be punctuated by certain notes which are accented (emphasized), in which case we would say that the unaccented notes in the figure are played with a 'normal' degree of emphasis. This is the case, for instance, in a clave pattern, whose notes are spaced evenly across time but with certain notes in the pattern receiving a degree of emphasis which makes them stand out, in terms of volume, from the others. Therefore, in a clave pattern, we have accented as well as unaccented notes. (Semantically, some might argue that a clave pattern is really only made up of the accented notes, with any unaccented notes being placeholders and not part of the pattern. This is open to debate, and depends largely on instrumentational factors.)

1 Ghost notes and unaccented notes
2 Ghost notes and rests
3 Ghost notes and grace notes
4 Example
5 Notation
6 See also

Ghost notes and unaccented notes

Ghost notes, however, are not simply the unaccented notes in a pattern. The unaccented notes in such a pattern as a clave are considered to represent the mean level of emphasis--they are neither absolutely emphasized nor unemphasized. If one further deemphasizes one of these unaccented notes to the same or a similar extent to which the accented notes in the pattern are emphasized, then one has 'ghosted' that note.

Ghost notes and rests

In a case in which a ghost note is deemphasized to the point of silence, that note then represents a rhythmic placeholder in much the same way as does a rest. This can be a very fine distinction, and the ability of an instrumentalist to differentiate between what is a ghost note and what is a rest is governed largely by the acoustic nature of the instrument. Wind instruments, including the human voice, and guitars are examples of instruments generally capable of ghosting notes without making them synonymous with rests, while a pianist or percussionist would have more difficulty in creating this distinction because of the percussive nature of the instruments, which hampers the resolution of the volume gradient as one approaches silence. However, in such a case as that the ghost notes were clearly audible, while being far less prominent than the unaccented notes which represent the mean degree of emphasis within the example, then a percussionist could be said to create what we might define as ghost notes.

Ghost notes and grace notes

A frequent misconception is that grace notes and ghost notes are synonymous. A grace note is by definition decidedly shorter in length than the principal note which it 'graces', but in many examples the grace note receives a greater degree of accentuation (emphasis) than the principal itself, even though it is a much shorter note than the principal. In other words, while a grace note could be ghosted, the ghosting of notes is a function of volume rather than of duration.

Example

As a practical example, consider a guitarist who wishes to ghost one note within a rhythmic figure he is playing. The guitarist would accomplish this by decreasing the pressure the fretting hand is exerting upon the strings when plucking the note to be ghosted (without actually removing the hand from the fretboard, which would cause the free vibration and the sounding of the fundamental (open) pitches of those strings which were plucked). The result would be what is sometimes called a 'scratch', and this would be an example of a ghost note (unless all the unaccented notes in the same figure were 'scratched', in which case the scratches would just be unaccented notes). Therefore, the phenomenon of the ghost note is really a relative one.

Notation

The term ghost note, then, can have various meanings. The term anti-accent is more specific. Moreover, there exists a set of anti-accent marks to show gradation more specifically. Percussion music in particular makes use of anti-accent marks, as follows:

slightly softer than surrounding notes: u (breve)
significantly softer than surrounding notes: ( ) (note head in parentheses)
much softer than surrounding notes: [ ] (note head in brackets)

In jazz notation for wind instruments or string instruments, the intent of a composer for a note to be ghosted is often indicated by using an 'x' for a notehead rather than an oval.