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Music Notation Basics Modern Notation
Created by Georgios Zaimis
As we use the letters of the alphabet to speak, write and generally manage our language,
so we use the music notes which are 7 in total:
C, D, E, F, G, A, B (Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si).
Every note has its own height, so after many stages of development,
a system was developed that allows the musician to write and read the notes
with the correct height relations between them.
So the final form of this system is the stave on which are written all the notes.
The five parallel lines that form the stave are equally spaced
and always measured from the bottom to top.
The distance between these lines are the four intervals.
Therefore, the positions of the notes written on the stave are the lines and spaces of it.
The higher you go up the notes in the stave the sharper is the sound;
the lower, vice-versa.
The pitch of the sounds used in music is not limited to the stave,
so when necessary, we can write notes above and below it,
after adding the lines, which we call the ledger lines.
Ledger lines are written at the same distance between them
and as much as formed by the lines of the stave.
At the beginning of the stave, we always write a shape called a key,
which indicates the names of the notes on the stave.
The note G is written on the second line, from which the key is formed
and gets its name (therefore called a G-clef).
The order of the notes to stave is the same as the one we mentioned earlier:
C, D, E, F, G, A, B.
Thus, since the G-clef gives the G name on the second line of the stave,
the other notes take their name on the stave and under or over it as well.
There is no fixed number of ledger lines we can use.
Depending on our needs, we can add above or below the stave
as much as we need every time.
Every sound, therefore each note has duration.
As a reference we have a unit in music named whole note.
Whole note is subdivided up to 64 time values.
So, we have the whole note with value of 4 beats, the half with value of 2 beats,
the quarter with 1 beat and the eighth with 1/2 beat.
The subdivision continues with the sixteenth with value of 1/4 beat,
the thirty-second with value of 1/8 beat and the sixty-fourth with value of 1/16 beat.
Let’s listen the durations of every value.
In the following audio excerpt, we will listen the values’ duration
with a metronome counting on each beat, therefore every quarter.
In a music piece, continuity of the notes can be interrupted for a while and then continue.
This interrupt is called pause.
And because we need to define the duration of each interruption,
we use signs similar to those referred before.
A small dot written beside and right to the note, adds half the value of it.
The note that has this dot is called dotted note.
So, the dotted whole values 3 halves, therefore 6 beats.
The dotted half values 3 quarters, therefore 3 beats.
The dotted quarter values 3 eighths, therefore 1 and 1/2 beats.
Similarly we can measure the dotted notes of shorter values.
Next to the note, there can be two dots.
In this case, the note is called double-dotted.
The double dot adds the half and the 1/4 of the note’s value, as shown in the example.
The tie is a curved line which joins two notes that have the same height
regardless of their time value.
In performance, the note is not repeated, but runs as a continuation of the previous.
So their values are added and performed as a note with a sum of these values.
The stave is divided by vertical lines called barlines.
At the end of the piece, we always write two barlines called double barlines.
The barlines are used to separate the stave into equal distances and define the measure.
So, the measure is the distance between the two barlines, in which notes and rests are contained.
The example here defines how we write the music piece we are going to listen now.
Here, each measure has a total length of 4 beats, otherwise 4/4.
So far we talked about the values of notes which are always
divided into two smaller parts that are equal to each other,
such as the whole which is divided into two halves,
one half to two quarters, the fourth in two eighths, etc.
But, if we want to separate a value unit in three equal values,
this can be done by using the triplet.
The triplet is three notes marked with number 3 above or below them,
and optionally with a curved line.
The total value of these is equal to the next higher value.
We can listen an audio excerpt to understand the characteristic length of triplet.
The distances between the notes are not all the same.
In the diatonic scale of the example, there are two kinds of distances or intervals,
the tone and semitone which is half of the tone.
In the diatonic scale, only two distances form semitones between the notes E-F and B-C.
The other notes have distance of a tone with each other.
Now, if between two sounds which distance is a tone (supposing C and D), we want to
listen the middle tone, then this is a semitone from C, but a semitone from D as well.
We don't have specific name for sounds between C and D to signify the intermediate sound,
so we use the same names as C and D, putting in front of the note a sign showing that
it rises by a semitone or other sign showing that the note lowers by a semitone.
So what we did in this case was to modify the pitch of the note,
so the accidental is this change of the pitch.
The signs we use in notation to alter the pitch of the notes are called accidental and are three:
the sharp, the flat and the natural.
The sharp raises the pitch of a note by one semi- tone and it is written always before the note.
Let's listen in our example the notes with sharp.
The flat lowers the pitch of a note by one semi- tone and it is written always before the note.
Let's listen in our example the notes with flat.
Natural is used when there is an accidental next to a note and we want to
return it to its original pitch.
Let's listen it in our following example. �