1. Naming the Notes
notation, notacion (Spanish f.)
note, nota (Spanish f.)
Music is composed of discrete elements or sounds called notes. Musical notation describes these elements in terms of their pitch (related to the note's frequency), their arrangement in time (when they begin to sound), and their duration, (how long they should last). The signs we use are called note signs or notes.
In English-speaking countries, in a general sense, a series of rising pitches are named using the first seven letters of the Roman alphabet:
A B C D E F G.
staff, stave, pentagrama (Spanish m.)
The note signs are placed on a grid formed of
horizontal lines and spaces. This grid is called the staff or stave.
The plural of either word is staves.
Although, in the past, staves could have many
different different numbers of lines, today the most common staff format has
five lines separated by four spaces and is know as the pentagram. When
numbering the lines, it is a widely used convention to number them from the
bottom (1) to the top (5) of each staff. The spaces between the
lines are numbered too, again from the bottom (1) to the top (4).
We illustrate two common formats - the upper is
usually used for music where only one note is played or sung at any particular
time (for example, solo parts for flute, trumpet, violin, voice, etc.) while
the lower, two staves coupled together with a curly brace and a systemic
barline, is used where many notes might be played at the same time (for
example, solo parts for harp, piano, organ, etc.)
Music is read from 'left' to 'right', in the same
direction as you are reading this text.
The higher the pitch of the note, the higher
vertically the note will be placed on the staff. Such notation is called
diastematic or intervallic
3. Placing Notes on the Staff
Note signs may lie on a line (where the
line passes through the note-head), in the space between two lines (where the
note-head lies between two adjacent lines), in the space above the top line or
on the space below the bottom line.
4. Leger or Ledger Lines
leger line, ledger line, líneas adicionales
(Spanish f.)
Note signs outside the range covered by
the lines and spaces of the staff are placed on, above or below
supplementary lines, called leger (or ledger) lines, which can be
placed above or below the staff. Where two or more consecutive notes are
written using leger lines, in order to make the notes easier to read, the lines
for each note are always horizontally separated from those of the note
following.
5. The Clef Sign
clef, clef sign, clef signature, clave
(Spanish f.)
To set the pitch of any note on the staff a
graphical symbol called a clef (from the Latin clavis meaning
key), clef sign or clef signature, is placed at the far left-hand
side of the staff. The clef establishes the pitch of the note
on one particular line of the staff and thereby fixes the pitch of all
the other notes lying on, or related to, the same staff.
It is common practice to visualise each clef as
a part of a much larger grid of eleven horizontal lines and ten spaces known
variously as the Great Staff, Grand Staff, Great Stave or Grand
Stave. Note the relationship between the Great Staff and most
commonly used clefs, treble (top left in the picture below), bass
(bottom left in the picture below) and alto (right in the picture
below). It should be stressed that, historically, there never was a staff
of eleven lines. It is solely a 'construct' or 'device' used by theorists to
demonstrate the relationship between various staves and clefs.
The note we call middle C and which lies in the middle
of the alto clef (for clarity, we have shown it in red), lies one line
below the five lines of the treble clef and lies one line above the five
lines of the bass clef.
6. The
Treble Clef
treble
clef, clave de sol en segunda (Spanish
f.)
The treble
clef is also called the G clef or G2 because the centre of
the clef curls around the the horizontal line (2), marked in red in the
diagram below, associated with the note G above middle C.
The treble clef symbol is actually a stylised
letter G.
The clef was originally known also as the violin
clef and is still called this in some countries.
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When drawing this symbol freehand it is easiest to
start from the bottom of the symbol and end with the curl around the G line.
7. Naming Notes on the Treble Clef
The four inner spaces of the treble clef read upwards
spell the word FACE .
The five lines read upwards spell EGBDF which you can
remember using the phrase ' E very G ood B oy D oes F ine '.
8. The Bass Clef
bass
clef, clave de fa en cuarta (Spanish f.)
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The bass clef is also called the F clef
or F4 because the two dots in the clef symbol lie above and
below the horizontal line (4), marked in red in the diagram below, associated
with the note F below middle C.
The bass clef symbol is actually a stylised
letter F where the two horizontal lines of the letter have been reduced to
two dots.
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When drawing this symbol freehand it is easiest to
start from the large dot and end with the tail at the bottom of the symbol -
after which one adds the two dots on either side of the F line.
9. The Alto Clef
alto clef, viola clef, counter-tenor clef, clave
de do (Spanish f.), clave de do en tercera (Spanish f.),
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The alto clef also called C3 is one of
a number that use the C clef symbol, so named because the the clef
symbol is centered on the horizontal line (3), marked in red in the diagram
below, associated with the note middle C.
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The alto clef is also known as the counter-tenor
or viola clef.
10. The Score
score, partitura (Italian f., Spanish f.)
We meet terms like 'letter', 'word', 'sentence', 'line', 'paragraph', 'page', 'chapter' and 'book' when examining the structure of a work of literature. Except in unusual circumstances, structure has nothing to do with content.
In music we have terms that serve a similar function; so, for example, ' note ', ' bar ', ' line ', ' section ', ' movement ' and ' score '. A composer creates a musical work, what we call a score, which has various structural elements. We will learn more about these terms as we progress through our lessons.
Ut Queant Laxis Resonare Fibris is the first
line of a hymn in honour of St. John the Baptist. The Roman Breviary divides it
into three parts and assigns the first, Ut queant laxis, etc., to
Vespers, the second, Antra deserti teneris sub annis, to Matins, the
third, O nimis felix, meritique celsi, to Lauds, of the feast of the
Nativity of St. John (24 June).
Durandus says that the hymn was composed by Paul the
Deacon on a certain Holy Saturday when, having to chant the Exsultet for
the blessing of the paschal candle, he found himself suffering from an unwonted
hoarseness. Perhaps bethinking himself of the restoration of voice to the
father of the Baptist, he implored a similar help in the first stanza. The
melody has been found in a manuscript of the tenth century, applied to the
words of Horace's Ode to Phyllis, entitled Est mihi nonum superantis annum.
The hymn is
written in Sapphic stanzas, of which the first is famous in the history of
music for the reason that the notes of the melody corresponding with the
initial syllables of the six hemistichs are the first six notes of the diatonic
scale of C. This fact led to the syllabic naming of the notes as Ut, Re,
Mi, Fa, Sol, La, as may be shown by capitalizing
the initial syllables of the hemistichs:
Guido of Arezzo, a Benedictine monk, showed his pupils
an easier method of determining the sounds of the scale than by the use of the
monochord. His method was that of comparison of a known melody with an unknown
one which was to be learned, and for this purpose he frequently chose the
well-known melody of the Ut queant laxis. Against a common view of
musical writers, Dom Pothier contends that Guido did not actually give these
syllabic names to the notes, did not invent the hexachordal system, etc., but
that insensibly the comparison of the melodies led to the syllabic naming. When
a new name for the seventh, or leading, note of our octave was desired, Erich
van der Putten suggested, in 1599, the syllabic Bi of labii, but
a vast majority of musical theorists supported the happier thought of the
syllable Si, formed by the initial letters of the two words of the last
line ( Si because J and I were then both written I
).
Si was much later changed to Te by a Miss S. A.
Glover and John Curwen so that each degree of the scale would have a unique
single letter abreviation used for written notation. This was the start of the movable
doh method of teaching which lasted in the UK for a hundred years (see Tonic Sol-fa ).
In the sixteenth century, Hubert Waelrant replaced the
Ut by a Do as he judged the ut syllable difficult to
pronounce. (The Latin u was pronounced differently by the French,
Flemish, Germans, English and others). In some countries (particularly France
and Belgium) the Do (and the other syllables) became fixed replacing the
orginal note names. Others have suggested that Ut was replaced by Do,
the first syllable of Dominus, in 1673, at the suggestion of Giovanni
Maria Bononcini.
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