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.