In music, a note head is the elliptical part of a note. Noteheads may be coloured completely black or white, indicating the note value (i.e., rhythmic duration). In a whole note, the note head is the only component of the note. Shorter note values attach a stem to the note head, and possibly beams or flags. The longer double whole note can be written with vertical lines surrounding it, two attached note heads, or a rectangular note head.^{[citation needed]}

Note heads ultimately derive from the neumes used to notate Gregorian chant. The punctum, seen at right, is the simplest of the shapes and most clearly anticipates the modern note head. When placed on a clef, the position of a note head indicated the relative frequency of a note. The development of different colors of note heads, and the use of it to indicate rhythmic values, was the use of white mensural notation, adopted around 1450.^{[citation needed]}

Franco of Cologne, ancient composer and music theorist, codified a system of rhythm notation. He explained this system in his work, Ars Cantus Mensurabilis, (which means “The Art of Measurable Music”) circa 1280. In this system, the relative duration of notes was indicated by the note shapes. The note heads were rectangles, squares, or diamonds depending on the note length. This system was expanded during the Ars Nova period.

In music, the term note has two primary meanings:

Notes are the "atoms" of much Western music: discretizations of musical phenomena that facilitate performance, comprehension, and analysis.

The term "note" can be used in both generic and specific senses: one might say either "the piece 'Happy Birthday to You' begins with two notes having the same pitch," or "the piece begins with two repetitions of the same note." In the former case, one uses "note" to refer to a specific musical event; in the latter, one uses the term to refer to a class of events sharing the same pitch.

Two notes with fundamental frequencies in a ratio of any power of two (e.g. half, twice, or four times) are perceived as very similar. Because of that, all notes with these kinds of relations can be grouped under the same pitch class. In traditional music theory pitch classes are represented by the first seven letters of the Latin alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F and G) (some countries use other names as in the table below). The eighth note, or octave is given the same name as the first, but has double its frequency. The name octave is also used to indicate the span of notes having a frequency ratio of two. To differentiate two notes that have the same pitch class but fall into different octaves, the system of scientific pitch notation combines a letter name with an Arabic numeral designating a specific octave. For example, the now-standard tuning pitch for most Western music, 440 Hz, is named a′ or A4. There are two formal ways to define each note and octave, the Helmholtz system and the Scientific pitch notation.

In anatomy, the head of an animal is the rostral part (from anatomical position) that usually comprises the brain, eyes, ears, nose and mouth (all of which aid in various sensory functions, such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste). Some very simple animals may not have a head, but many bilaterally symmetric forms do. Heads develop in animals by an evolutionary trend known as cephalization. In bilaterally symmetrical animals, nerve tissues concentrate at the anterior region, forming structures responsible for information processing. Through biological evolution, sense organs and feeding structures also concentrate into the anterior region, which collectively form the head.

In human anatomy, the head is the upper portion of the human body. It supports the face and is maintained by the skull, which itself encloses the brain. Humans have the largest head size relative to body size of any species.^{[citation needed]}

Lea Michele Sarfati (born August 29, 1986), known professionally as Lea Michele, is an American actress and singer. Michele began working professionally as a child actress on Broadway in productions such as Ragtime and Les Misérables. She originated the role of Wendla in the musical Spring Awakening and currently plays Rachel Berry in the Fox television series Glee and made her film debut in New Year's Eve starring alongside Ashton Kutcher. Michele performs in the soprano range.

Michele was born in the Bronx, New York City. She is the only daughter of Edith, a nurse, and Marc Sarfati, a delicatessen owner. Her mother is Italian American and Roman Catholic, while her father is a Spanish Sephardic Jew. Michele was raised Catholic, and has stated that her father "gladly" attends church with her and her mother. She grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey. She attended Rockland Country Day School for elementary school in New York and then Tenafly High School. Michele was home schooled one year while working in Toronto, Ontario on Ragtime. She attended Stagedoor Manor in the Catskills, a center for performing arts training. She was then later accepted to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, but opted instead to continue working professionally on the stage.

Solange Piaget Knowles (born June 24, 1986), who performs under the mononym Solange, is an American singer-songwriter, actress, model, dancer, and DJ. Knowles was born and raised in Houston, Texas along with her older sister singer Beyoncé. Showing an interest in music recording at an early age, she eventually broke into the music scene at 16. She has released two studios albums: Solo Star in 2003 and Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams in 2008, which peaked at number nine in the US Billboard 200 chart.

Aside from recording, Knowles has ventured into film, modeling, and entrepreneurship. Knowles has been compared to her sister by the media, but she dismisses the notion, saying they are artistically different.

Knowles was born in Houston, Texas, to Mathew Knowles and Tina Knowles. Solange is the second child of Mathew and Tina, and the younger sister of Beyoncé. Her father is African American and her mother is Creole (of African, Native American, and French descent) and Irish descent. Her maternal grandparents are Lumis Beyincé and Agnéz Deréon, (a seamstress). She is also a descendant of Acadian leader Joseph Broussard. As a child, Knowles studied dance and theater. At the age of five, she made her singing debut at an amusement park. She began writing songs at the age of nine. At 13, she decided to pursue recording, but her parents initially advised her to wait. At the age of 15 Knowles replaced a departed dancer and performed with her sister's group Destiny's Child on tour. During the group's opening stint for American pop singer Christina Aguilera's tour, Knowles temporarily replaced Destiny's Child member Kelly Rowland after Kelly broke her toes backstage during a costume change. When Knowles was 16, her father, who was then also her manager, signed her to his recording company, Music World Entertainment.