Music Appreciation Tutorial #1: Music Notation Basics

Music Notation Basics
By Sonia Joie

SoundWave
All sound comes from vibrations, which travel as waves through
different mediums, including air.These waves are called Sound
Waves.
The amplitude—or height—of a wave controls the volume of
sound produced, and the frequency—of speed at which the
sound wave occurs—controls the pitch of the sound.
When you sing—or simply talk—a vibration is created in your
vocal chords, which sends out a sound wave, creating an audible
sound that people can hear.

Music
In the most technical of terms, music is a compilation of
multiple sound waves.
However, music is so much deeper than that.
Music is notes, feelings, and memories. It speaks to you.
It could be argued over, if the sound produced by hammering in
a nail is, in it repetition, music, but the answer depends on who
you ask.
There are also things which are agreed by most everyone to be
music, such as a waltz on the piano.
The answer of what defines music is specific to every person.

Staff
Writing down music is a way to record sounds so that they can
be remembered or reproduced, much like the writing of ordinary
words.
When writing music, the notes rest on what is called a staff,
which is like a way of visually placing the notes. It lets you know
what note you’re looking at, and in a way where looking at an
overview of multiple notes creates something like a mental line,
showing how the music moves and helping you to see what’s
coming as you reproduce a song.
The staff is composed of five horizontal lines, one above the
other, with equally spread spaces between them.

Rhythm
Rhythm is how time is separated out; the amount of time a note
lasts.Two beats, three beats, one then two then one than two
then one then two than one.
In music notation, there are names and note styles for notes of
different lengths.
Whole Note = 4 beats =
Half Note = 2 beats . . . . . . =
Quarter Note = 1 beat . . . . . . . =
Eighth Note = ½ beat . . . . . . . . . . =
Sixteenth Note = ¼ beat . . . . . . . . . . . =
Rhythm changes the sound of a song and the mood it creates.

Rests
Sometimes between notes in music, there are rests: a pause in
which no notes are played.Those rests, much like notes, can last
for different amounts of time. Rather than names to identify
how many beats a rest is, they just have different symbols or
orientations on the staff.
= 4 beats = ½ beat
= 2 beats = ¼ beat
= 1 beat

Meter
Meter is the general pacing used for a piece of music.The most
common meter is a “1-2-3-4” pattern.
A 1-2 pattern is used typically for marches, and the “1-2-3”
meter is used in waltzes.The sets of 3 in a waltz correspond with
the three-step pattern of the dance which accompanies it.
Whatever meter belongs to a piece of music, 1-2-3-4, for
example, that many beats will apply to one measure. After that,
the next measure will restart the count and continue the
pattern. For example:
[measure 1] 1-2-3-4, [measure 2] 1-2-3-4, [measure 3] 1-2-3-4…

Measure
A measure is a section of the music staff on which notes are
placed. It depicts a portion of time, whose amount of beats
depends on the time signature/meter of the music composition.
If there was a meter of 4 beats in a song (1-2-3-4,) every
measure would contain 4 beats, which could be filled with a
combination of notes and rests.
For example—again picturing a meter of 4— a measure could
contain 1 half note (2 beats,) 1 quarter note (1 beat) and one 1-
beat rest, because added together, all those beats equal 4, just
like specified in the measure’s meter:
2 + 1 + 1 = 4 beats, comprised of 3 notes and 1 rest.

Bar Line
A bar line signifies the end of a measure (or “bar”), and is
depicted as a vertical line. As discussed earlier, measures are
used to keep track of meter and rhythm, so knowing when a
measure ends is very important.
A double bar line signifies the end of a section within a piece of
music. Sometimes, right before the double bar line, you find the
“:” symbol, which means everything between the previous and
current double bar line is repeated.

Time Signature
Time Signatures, (located near the beginning of a staff) which
consist of two numbers, on on top of the other, convey meter.
The top number shows the number of beats in each measure,
and the bottom number shows what type of note (quarter,
whole, half, etc.) is being considered the length of 1 beat.
If you saw a time signature of ¾, if would mean there was 3
beats per measure, with a quarter note being 1 beat.
The typical 1-2-3-4 meter shown earlier
is represented by a signature of 4/4.

Clef
Clefs, which are symbols found at the beginning of a staff,
signify the pitch of notes being referenced.
The Treble Clef, or higher notes, are found above middle C.
The Bass Clef, or lower notes, are found below middle C.
The most typical example of middle C is the fourth C-note from
the left on a standard, 88-key piano.
Scientifically, middle C is “261.625565 Hz,” where Hz (or Hertz,)
stands for the frequency of a sound wave, and in turn, the pitch
of the sound.

Treble Clef
The treble clef (signified by this symbol: ) starts from the A
note and continues in the pattern of notes, which follows the
alphabet from A-G and repeats from the beginning (A) once G is
reached.
In the treble clef, the space notes are located like this:
and the line notes like this:

Bass Clef
In the bass clef ( ) which, just as every clef does, also follows
the pattern of A-G, start at G (the lowest bass note) and end at A
(the highest bass note.)
The space notes are aligned like so:
and the line notes like this:

Grand Staff
The grand staff is the whole musical staff put together: the
treble and bass clefs.
The treble clef is always pictured on top, corresponding with its
higher pitch, and the bass clef on the bottom, corresponding
with its lower pitch.
On the piano, the treble staff is typically played with the right
hand, and the bass with the left, although with more
complicated pieces, hands sometimes cross over to reach notes
smoothly.
Grand Staff:

Sharps
Sharps and flats (we’ll get to flats in a minute) are half way
between two notes. Sharps are above the current note, meaning
if you had an A, the sharp of that note (called an A sharp) would
be a half step above the A, between the A and the B.
The symbol for a sharp looks much like a number sign ( ), and
can be found next to notes when written on the staff in order to
convey that a sharp note is desired.

Flats
A flat is the inverse of a sharp (and vice versa, of course). A flat
note is a half step below a note, rather than a sharp’s half step
above.
A flat is signified by a symbol that looks a lot like a lowercase b:
Used on a staff, a flat note would look something like this:

Naturals
A natural note ( ) is a note in its natural form—not a sharp or
a flat.
The symbol isn’t used most of the time, as with the absence of
any symbol, a note is assumed to be natural.
However, in some cases, when a lot of sharps or flats are being
used, sharp or flat is set as the standard note form—meaning no
need to write the symbols every time—causing natural note
symbols to be necessary in marking when natural notes appear.
Pictured on a staff, a natural note would
either be an ordinary note with no symbol
by its side, or look like this:

Music Appreciation Tutorial #1: Music Notation Basics

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Similar to Music Appreciation Tutorial #1: Music Notation Basics (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

Music Appreciation Tutorial #1: Music Notation Basics