Welcome to Day 2 of learning how to read music in order to
write your own! In this second day, we will dig a little deeper into some
musical terms and ideas that you will need to know to be able to read music.
Here is a link to Day 1, in case you missed it, where I cover the letter names
of the white notes on the piano and the grouping of the black notes.
Ok, lets get right to it!
______________________________________________________
The Staff and Clefs:
In music, the notes are written are a staff, which consists
of five parallel lines (see photo) with four spaces in between. Each note on the staff corresponds to particular key/pitch on the piano. You must
consider both the lines and the spaces to read music!
Notice that the notes can written “on the line,” meaning
that the line goes through the note head (circle part of the note), as well as
“in the spaces,” meaning that the note head is in-between two lines—in the
“space” between them (See Photo).
There are two clefs that are commonly used in music, and are
used in playing the piano, and these are placed at the beginning of a staff.
What is a clef? A clef is a musical symbol that tells you what area of the
piano (low or high) the notes a written/what keys should be pressed on the
instrument.
The Treble Clef, pronounced like the word “trouble” but with
an e “eh” sound, also called the G clef (we will get back to why in a later section) –
this clef is used for all of the high notes from C4 (middle C) and higher (to
the right) on the piano!
The Bass Clef, pronounced “base,” not the fish, is also
called the F Clef (we will come back to this idea later) denotes that you are
using the lower notes, from the bottom of the piano to C4 (middle C).
If we stack two staffs on top of each other with a little
gap in-between, with the Treble Clef in the top staff and the Bass Clef in the
bottom staff, we get what is called the “Grand Staff.” In this Grand Staff, we
can write all of the notes/keys that can be played on a piano (88 total)!
Why is Middle C (C4) special?
Remember that I said that Middle C (C4) was special, back on Day 1? It is
special because the note is written between the two clefs in the gap in the
middle. Middle C is also special because
it is frequently seen written in both Treble Clef and Bass Clef! See the image
below:
Please note that middle C has a little line (called a ledger
line) going through the middle of the note head, regardless of if it is written
in the Treble or Bass Clef. This makes this note/pitch distinct and memorable!
Reading Your First Notes!
This photo shows the notes above and below
Middle C (C4) on the Piano
Just like the musical alphabet where the letters occur in alphabetical
order as you play the white keys in a row (this is called step-wise motion),
notes on the staff also keep alphabetical order, as the notes move in
succession upward from line note to space note to line note to space note, etc…
see photo!
Shown above, from left to right, are the notes:
Middle C, D, E and F.
When the notes go higher on the staff (as seen above, moving right on the piano),
they go up in pitch, however, if the notes go down the staff, then the
pitch also becomes lower (moving left on the piano).
______________________________________________________
This is where we will stop for Day 2 of our “How to Read
Music” article series. I will be back tomorrow, Friday, with Day 3. Not a bad
start to learning how to read music, you now can read your first four notes! Be
sure to come back tomorrow, when we will jump into reading all the notes of the
Treble Clef!
Thank you so much reading this
article series, I hope you have found it to be interesting and informative. I
am so excited to share my passion for creative activities in music, but we must
take it one step at a time. As always, have a fantastic creative day, and I will see you
tomorrow with Day 3!
PS. If you have any questions regarding the information provided in this article or would like clarification for any of the above ideas, please do not hesitate to ask questions in the comment section below! I am happy to answer all of your questions!
______________________________________________________
Follow this Blog!
Follow Impulsive Artistry at these sites, CLICK ANY NAME TO LINK:
Follow by Email (Feedburner) — get instant updates when each new post is uploaded! Enter your Email Address in the box in the upper right sidebar to sign up! (May not be visible to mobile uses)
No comments:
Post a Comment