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Music Notation Basics Part II - Key Signatures & Accidentals
(28 Oct 04)
Summary and Exercises
SUMMARY
As in Part I, I have again described the staff as a graphic, or pictorial, device that gives us a sense of 'up and down' to music. You should have the idea that the staff can mean exactly what we want it to--so long as we use accepted symbols to tell us what one line or one space stands for. We use clefs to specify what the note values on the staff are.
Since a lot of music is written using notes that belong to a particular major scale, it is handy to list the sharps or flats for that scale in one place called a key signature. Then, we know to play those sharps and flats wherever the corresponding notes occur in the music, unless we are told otherwise by an accidental.
Accidentals are symbols that tell us to sharp or flat a note (or to play the natural note), and can be used to override the key signature. The use of key signatures and accidentals makes written music less cluttered and easier to read. I also showed how the key signatures are written based on how the scales are built, starting with the C major scale.
Finally, I got back to the idea that we are free to place our music on the staff wherever we choose, so long as common practice among composers and musicians ensures the right notes get played. So, to accomodate the ranges of instruments and how they are played, we can shift music on the staff for specific sets of instruments. We name these different sets of instruments based on how much the music for them is typically shifted, or transposed.
You now have a good set of basics regarding how the staff is used in a vertical sense. You know the origins of the staff from a piano keyboard view, the notation that tells us how the staff is being used, and some idea of just how flexible those rules can be. I think you now have a good basis to move on to another important dimension of music--the time dimension.
I hope you had fun with Part II. In Music Notation Basics Part III, I promise to provide a view of the 'temporal' or time dimension of music that is as naive and bizarre as the presentations in Parts I and II. You should expect no less!
EXERCISES
In exercises 1 through 4 below, write the name of each note on the staff. Look at the clef first, check for a key signature, determine the note name, then apply any accidental that may appear with the note. Git 'er done!
1.
2.
3.
4.
ANSWERS
1. D, Ab, G, C, E
2. C#, A, G, C#, E
3. A, D, B, A, Eb
4. B, E, C, B, Gb
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Kirk Fleming is your old pal Bongo Boy, a Colorado USA resident with a taste for Delta blues, Haydn, old-school and pop punk, Mozart, Afro-Cuban styles and the pop sounds of Senegal and Ivory Coast. Kirk is widely acclaimed and recognized internationally as an all-right kind of guy.
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