Aren't symbols for "rests" unnecessary?

[intoresting]

I just started to learn to read music. I noticed that there are symbols for "rests" which mean we should be "silent".  I don't know why they are necessary.  Up until now, I have only written music using midi notes. (I'm referring to the notes that you might see to the right of a virtual vertical piano keyboard in a sequencing program. They are often round or rectangular and the duration of one of these notes can be changed by "dragging" the right side until the note is the desired length.)  Anyway, when viewing these midi notes,  there is no need for a symbol that represents silence. It is simply understood that the space between the end of one note and the beginning of the next, from left to right,  represents silence. I don't understand why this isn't true  for notation as well.  These silence symbols seem redundant to me. There must be something that I'm not understanding...

[Rach3]

It is simply understood that the space between the end of one note and the beginning of the next, from left to right,  represents silence.

No, it is understood that the duration of a note represents sustained sound unless otherwise indicated by a rest.

[xvimbi]

Rests are not quite redundant. Imagine a piece written in 4/4 that has only two quarter notes in a particular measure. Rests are necessary to indicate exactly when the quarter notes are to be played. Example: compare Q R R Q (Q=quarter note, R=quarter rest) with Q Q R R, or R Q R Q, or Q Q (i.e. no rests indicated). They are all different (the last one is entirely wrong). The rule simply is that a measure must contain the correct number of beats made up of notes and rests.

Having said that, in pieces with more than one voice, one often finds that rests are omitted for the second, third, etc. voice(s). This is OK, as long as the notes for the other voices are aligned with the notes from the first voice, so it is clear when to play them.

[intoresting]

So the symbols for notes do not include any information about the duration of the note? 

[intoresting]

Couldn't rests be measured by the distance of a note from a bar line?  For example, a quarter note placed 1/4 inch to the right of a bar line would mean to wait for the length of a quarter note before playing.  ... Silence could simply be measured in inches or fractions thereof.  Couldn't they?

It is simply understood that the space between the end of one note and the beginning of the next, from left to right,  represents silence.

By the way, I was referring to midi notes when I said this in case there was some confusion.

[xvimbi]

Couldn't rests be measured by the distance of a note from a bar line?  For example, a quarter note placed 1/4 inch to the right of a bar line would mean to wait for the length of a quarter note before playing.  ... Silence could simply be measured in inches or fractions thereof.  Couldn't they?  By the way, I was referring to midi notes when I said this in case there was some confusion.

That would be way too difficult to read. Reasonably advanced pieces have measures that can have 30 - 100 or more notes in them, most of which are 32nd or even 64th notes and, potentially, several voices happening at the same time. There is no way one could reliably decipher a 64th of a measure located somewhere in the middle of it.

[intoresting]

Thanks Xvimbi. That makes sense.

[jkristiand]

Consider the writing of music. It was invented about half a millenium ago, back then they notated using ink pencils, how could they possibly have such precise handwriting..