Music Theory Lesson #2

Lesson #2
Reading Music 1

So, now that we know that the musical alphabet (A B C D E F G) corresponds to a key on the piano, we can now start to learn how to read music.

Here’s a quick tech term: The piece of paper that has music on it is called sheet music. Here’s an example of a full page of sheet music.

Now, let’s dissect this piece of music.

You’ll notice that there are five vertical lines that every so often have a horizontal line crossing them (don’t worry about those horizontal lines yet; they come up in a future lesson):

Now, let’s get rid of everything but those vertical lines and you’re left with this.

This is cool, but as we can see, it doesn’t give us much information. But this is the building block of reading music.

A staff has five lines and four spaces.

Are you wondering what those lines and spaces are for? Well, remember the musical alphabet from before? You guessed it: Those A B C D E F G’s all have to go somewhere on that staff. But where? This is where music theory starts to get a little fancy.

See this?

This is called a treble clef or a G clef. Why is it called a G clef? Two reasons: It is a representation of a fancy g and also it tells you where the note G is located on the staff. The G is in the circle part of the clef. Check this out (ignore the 4's, 3's and 2's and the bass clef for now.)

Isn’t that cool? Now, taking what we know about the musical alphabet, we can deduce where the other notes go.

Uh oh, but it looks like we ran out of room at the top of the staff. What can we do? Well, here’s a trick, just add a line (essentially just extending the staff) through that one particular note and problem solved.

From musicreadingsavant.com

As you can see, this works the other direction, too. These extra lines are called ledger lines, and they’re quite important to the study of music.

If you learn better with quick shortcuts, there is a shortcut for remembering the notes for the treble clef: For the lines: Every Good Boy Does Fine and for the spaces, FACE.

There’s a downstairs neighbor to the treble clef. It’s called the bass clef or F clef, and it looks like this.

You see those two dots on either side of that fourth line? That’s where F is located on this staff and following our logic we can figure out where the other notes are, too.

For you shortcutters out there, there is also another shortcut for bass clef notes: For the lines, (Be careful, it’s similar to treble!) Good Boys Do Fine Always and for the spaces: All Cows Eat Grass.

While knowing these shortcuts are good for becoming familiar with the notes, I can’t stress how important it is to become familiar with the notes in a way that you can eventually cease to wonder about what note it is and know almost (if not) automatically what note it is you’re looking at.

Now, let’s go back to the Treble (G) clef and check out this C.

In fact let’s chill with this C note right here for a bit. This is an important note. You can think of this note as an ambassador to the treble and bass clefs. You see, if you put the treble clef on top of the bass clef and join them together they cease to become separate clefs and (like Mechasaur) become a grand staff. This note is the point where they unite (Technically, the B below that middle C is also a meeting of the two clefs as is the D above it or any other note with ledger lines. In fact, with ledger lines you can write any note that lives in the bass clef in the treble clef and vice versa. Here’s an example:

From epianostudio.com

But since this particular C is symmetrical with the clefs, it’s a perfect meeting point).

Because of this special note, it’s often referred to as “middle C”. If you start at the bottom of the piano and count to the first C, and from that C you count to the second, and then the third and then the fourth, that fourth C is middle C (because of that we also like to call this C, C4…  Don’t worry, this will make more sense when we talk about octaves in a future lesson.)

Once you know where to identify middle C and can read Treble (G) clef and Bass (F) clef, you have a solid basic foundation music reading. There are a few other tips and tricks that we will cover in a future lesson, but check out the sheet music from the beginning of this lesson. Even though we don’t know everything about it yet, we’re making progress!

Fun Fact: We read music like we read books in English – from left to right. Keep this in mind as we move forward.

Music Theory Lesson #1

Music Theory Lesson #1

The Musical Alphabet - Meeting the Magnificent 7

Ready for a bombshell?

Every song that you have ever heard (in the western world that is) only uses 12 different notes.

Now, that may sound like an oversimplification of music, but the theory behind it is true. In music we only have 12 different notes to choose from. In fact, we can make that oversimplification even more general by saying:

Every song that you have ever heard only used a variation of 7 notes.

Whoa.

What about those epic rock songs or those super intense symphonies I hear about? Yep. All variations of those 7 notes. What about the notes violins play and tubas play and pianos play? Yep, the same 7. What about the notes Beethoven or Green Day composed with? You betcha (sensing a pattern, here?)

All music is founded on these 7 notes.

So what are these magnificent 7 notes? 

A B C D E F G

In music, we use the first seven letters of the alphabet to name notes. What happens when we get to G? Is there an H note? Nope, we just repeat the alphabet again with A.

A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G

This pattern continues for a very long time from the lowest sound in the universe we have to the highest sound we know of – those would be variations of one of the 7 notes listed above. Now, that seems like way too big a soundscape to use, so in music we necessarily restrict our sound range (more on this will be explored in a future entry). For now, the keyboard is our sound range playground.

A normal keyboard has 88 keys but since that is a little unwieldy to work with, this one octave keyboard will serve our purposes (we discuss what an “octave” is in a future entry). You can think of a piano keyboard like a box of crayons and the notes are different colors that we can take out and play with. Yes, it is true that certain instruments can play higher notes or lower notes than the piano, but for our purposes (and for the everything on this website) the keyboard is going to be our best friend.

So, that's cool that each note has a name but so what? Well, what if I told you that every single one of those notes (A B C D E F G) relates to a white key on the piano?

In fact, here's an A on the piano.

And here's the musical alphabet on the piano.

From www.pianolessonsmadesimple.com

This pattern continues all the way from the first note to the last note on the piano.

Wondering what those black keys are doing hanging out up there? Well, remember in the beginning of this entry I said that there are 12 notes in music? Those black keys are the other 5. We will get into the nitty-gritty of those keys and why they're there in a future entry, but for now just know that they exist and they don't mean any harm.

I encourage you to find your own pattern to help you learn where you can locate a C or an A on any part of the piano. For me, following the pattern of group of two black keys and group of three black keys helped separate the keyboard in digestible chunks. From there I memorized where a C was and then slowly worked from there. This part takes time and patience. It's like the math of music. There are no shortcuts to knowing where the notes are on the piano other than just drilling over and over again. But if you know where every note is or can quickly identify where it will be, you will be light-years ahead of where you need to be at this time.