'a bleak note' is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to refer to something that is depressing, discouraging, or hopeless. For example, "The company's decision to lay off 10% of its staff was a bleak note in what was otherwise a promising year."
The tale ends abruptly, on a bleak note, but a rainstorm delivers a glimmer of hope.
Bullough's narrative ends on a bleak note, as he examines — without sympathy — the isolated, distrustful man Father Dudko became after he sided with the system.
In addition, a consumer survey released Friday by the University of Michigan sounded a bleak note for the home building industry.
For a man who considered himself a genuine patriot, it was a bleak note on which to end his professional career.
It ends, however, on a bleak note: "I think you could say you and I have earned whatever dough the people let us keep.
Mr. Lhota, seizing on Mr. de Blasio's inequality theme, hit a bleak note as well: "I believe that 'the tale of two cities' is a divisive device that he's using.
Pemberton Park is a support group in bricks and mortar, she beams: the grandmothers "have each other's backs".On a bleaker note, the grandmothers describe a society in bad shape.
On a bleaker note, I remember being in Harare, Zimbabwe, watching queues of dozens of voters who, Mugabe's opposition claimed, had been bussed in from rural areas to skew the outcome.
Writing about the current production directed by Ian Rickson, Mr. Isherwood writes that "although Chekhov classified 'The Seagull' as a comedy," the production "strikes a consistently bleak note".
Although Chekhov classified "The Seagull" as a comedy, and the actors — led by the ravishing Kristin Scott Thomas as the vain Arkadina — infuse their performances with a gentle awareness of their characters' absurdities, the production strikes a consistently bleak note.
And Dennis Kelly's new English version ensures this moral problem play ends on a sharply bleak note.
