Introduction
This multi-part Music Notation Basics begins with the basics of music notation, including note names and the relationship of notes to one another and to pitch.
I will use the piano keyboard to help make ideas clearer, for two reasons. First, the keyboard is very familiar to many people, and you can usually find one nearby in a store, community center, church or tavern. Second, the keyboard provides a great picture of how our musical system is built, and many of us learn best through pictures.
Some Terms
I will use the word pitch to mean the frequency of a sound—whether it sounds lower or higher in the sense that a bass drum has a lower pitch than a snare, for example. Pitch says nothing about how loud a sound is.
I'll use tone to mean a sound that has a single, fixed pitch. In this article I won't use the word tone to describe the quality or character of a sound, such as 'a pleasing tone' or 'good tone'.
The word note will mean a few different things, and I'll try to let you know how I am using the word if I think it might be confusing.
First, a note is a written mark (or symbol), such as "
", used to specify the pitch and duration of a musical tone.Second, it can also mean the musical tone itself; the actual sound that you hear. For example, you might say, "Please play a higher note." or, "Let's hear the first few notes of that song."
Third, if one were to ask, "What note is that you just played?", we are asking for the name of the note. Because all notes have names, we often use the word note to mean note name.
Because there are only a few note names used in music and yet there are many different musical tones, note names have to be reused. If I asked you to play the note 'A' on your piano, you might need to know which one, and I'll discuss that problem in this article.
You can see that the word 'note' refers to a number of ideas. It represents concepts, much as the word 'number' refers to various related concepts. Let's begin with how the notes are named.
Notes and Note Names
You can create music from any sound you choose. But it would be hard to read and write music, or even to talk about it, if there weren't a way to refer to standard musical tones.
Lack of a common definition for these tones was a major problem until some standardization began to take hold, specified tones were each given a name, and rules set up to define how all tones would be related to one another.
So, a musical note is a tone that meets a very specific set of rules. If something is a note, then it is a tone that has a specific pitch. Each musical note has its own specific pitch, and so only specified pitches are notes. So, while every note is a tone, not every tone is a note!
Every note has a name and the letters A through G are used in naming all the musical notes. Since that is only seven letters and you probably know there are more than seven tones used to make music, each of those letters is used to name more than one note.
If you have a guitar you already knew this—there is a low E and a high E string. Same note name, different pitch. But, our musical forefathers ensured that all notes having the same name are related to one another in a very specific way. I won't explain that now.
On the piano keyboard, the white keys correspond to the notes A through G. The picture below shows how the note names relate to a short section of the keyboard.
The piano keyboard has up to seven such sections, side-by-side—plus three more white keys to end on 'C'. See the larger example section below. The 'C' key that is near the center of the keyboard is called Middle C, and we'll refer to it later.
Finally, here's where Middle C appears on a full, 88-key keyboard:
As another reference, the dark circles on the guitar fretboard below show the locations where Middle C can be played:
On the keyboard sketch above, I did not label the black keys. But, I said earlier that all notes used in music are named using just the first seven letters of the alphabet.
The musical notes named using only the letters A through G, with no other modification, are called the 'natural' notes, or the 'naturals'. But, the black keys must also have names that somehow use just the seven letters A through G. To do it, we modify the letter names using two new terms: sharp and flat.
Each note name (letter) can be changed (that is, altered) to two new note names by adding either of the words 'sharp' and 'flat'. For example, the note name 'D' is re-used as 'D sharp' to name a different note. On the keyboard, the first black key to the right of a white key has the name of that white key, plus the word 'sharp'. The black key to the right of 'D' is therefore 'D sharp'.
In the same way, the first black key to the left of a white key has the name of that white key, plus the word 'flat'. So, for example, the black key to the left of 'D' is 'D flat'.
Notice that all black keys are both to the right of a white key, and to the left of some other white key. Look at the black keys that appear between each pair of 'C' and 'D' keys. It seems like that black key is 'C sharp', but it also could be 'D flat'. Which one is it? The answer is: both. Every black key corresponds to a single note, but that note has two equivalent names.
Definition: These equivalent names are called 'enharmonic' names, and sometimes you may see the phrase 'enharmonic notes'. Guni's Chord Scales articles provide some idea of when you should select one name over the other, but I won't discuss that here.
You will seldom see the words 'sharp' or 'flat' written next to a note name in music. Instead, the symbol '
' is used as an abbreviation for sharp and looks like what is often called the 'pound sign'.The symbol '
' is used for flat, and is a mark that looks something like the lower-case letter 'b'.Please note that I will use this same "pound sign", ie "#" throughout the text of this article to represent the "sharp", and a regular "b" to refer to a "flat".
These symbols are always written to the right side of the note name. So, for example C sharp is written C#, and D flat is written Db. These two symbols, the '#' and 'b', are called accidentals. There are other accidentals that we'll get to later in the series.
Here is the same keyboard diagram we saw before, but now with the black keys labeled. I have chosen to use only the sharp accidentals to label the black keys in this diagram.
You may have noticed there is no B# or E#. I can't explain why, but you can see for yourself that if you want to use only seven letters of the alphabet to name all of your notes, and if you want to have only twelve musical 'steps' to get from A to the next A (instead of fourteen), then two steps have to be taken away.
If you begin counting the steps from one A to the next, with A# being step 1, B is step 2 and so on, you'll see that you must make twelve such steps to reach the next A.
This is how the old-timers set things up—twelve musical 'jumps' from any note to the next note of the same name (for example, from A to A, or from D to D, and so on). B# and E# were chosen as the two 'extra' notes that simply had to go.
The Distance Between Notes
In music theory the word step has a specific, well-defined meaning. I just used it to mean moving from one piano key to the next higher one. But in music theory, that distance (or interval) is actually called a half-step. Again, please refer to Guni's article, Intervals, the key to Harmonic Understanding for more about musical intervals.
For now, just know that the musical distance we move, either up or down, by moving from one piano key to the next, is called a half-step.
On the guitar, moving from one fret to the next (on any single string) is also a half-step. A half-step is also called a semitone. The two are the same.
Referring again to the keyboard diagram, this means there is a half-step between any natural note and its sharp, between the notes B and C, and between E and F.
In fact, you can think of B# as being another name for C, and E# as another name for F. But, it’s rare to see B or E written with a sharp, and rare to see C or F written with a flat. But, you can think of the two accidentals I've introduced as 'operators' or 'functions'—their function is to raise (or lower) the note by a semitone.
So, B# simply means 'raise B natural by a semitone'. That's completely valid—it just happens that if you raise B a semitone you get C, that's all.
On the keyboard above, I only wrote one name for each note, leaving out the enharmonic names for the black keys. I could have just as well named the very same keys this way:
A – Bb – B - C – Db – D – Eb – E – F – Gb – G – Ab
Written with either sharps or flats, this set of 12 notes forms the basis for Western music, is the complete set of notes we have to work with, and is called the chromatic scale.
SUMMARY
A tone is a sound that has a fixed pitch. Certain tones, having specific, defined pitches, have been selected to serve as musical tones, or notes. All notes are named using the letters A through G of the alphabet. The natural notes are named just using those seven letters by themselves. Those same letters, used with accidentals (symbols that mean either sharp or flat) provide five more notes called altered notes, and give us a total of twelve. Those twelve notes together form the chromatic scale.
The white keys on a keyboard instrument allow us to play the natural notes, the black keys let us play the altered notes. On a standard piano, the chromatic scale is repeated seven times—seven and 1/4 times, actually—and the note C played with the C key near the center of the keyboard is called Middle C.
When we move up or down along the chromatic scale by one note, we say we've moved a half-step or a semitone, and so the tone difference between any two neighboring keyboard keys is also a semitone. On a single guitar string, the tone difference between any two neighboring frets is also a semitone.
Putting Notes on Paper
Imagine trying to tell another musician what your music sounds like without actually playing the music. Imagine that you have spent many weeks or months composing a piece of music and want to be able to play it again decades later, or would like it to be played long after you've passed away. Being able to write down a set of instructions for playing your music would be important. It was especially important throughout history, when there was no way to record the music itself. How to start?
You need to describe many things about your music to help ensure other musicians perform it the way you intend. Some basic things would be note names or something to describe the pitch of the notes, the duration of the notes and how fast it should be played, or its tempo.
But this would hardly be enough. You might want to specify loudness, changes in loudness, how to transition between notes (abruptly or smoothly for example), and when to be silent and for how long. Everything that makes your music unique will have to be written down. It should be compact so performers can read it quickly—while playing, if needed.
I'll cover just one thing at a time—how to describe the pitch of the notes to be played. An example problem: how do you tell another musician to play the seven natural notes A, B, C, D, E, F, and G?. Seems simple enough—just write down the note names. Done!
It's not that simple. There are eight 'B' keys on a big piano keyboard. If I simply wrote 'B' on my sheet music, how would the pianist know which key to use? Of course guitarists have a similar (or worse) situation—as you can see on the fretboard below, where I've highlighted just some of the places on the fretboard where you can play a B. We need a way to distinguish between one B and all the others—some are high-pitched, some are low-pitched.
The sense that some notes are 'higher' or 'lower' than others led to a graphical way to write notes on paper that positions notes higher or lower than others to indicate pitch using what is called the staff.
The staff shown below is the grand staff, and looks like a section of graph paper without the vertical lines. It is like a graph because it uses physical position to show how notes relate to one other—composers write lower-pitched notes toward the bottom of the staff, and higher-pitched ones toward the top.
I mentioned earlier that the C key near the center of a keyboard plays the note called middle C. The line at the center of the grand staff represents Middle C.
We don't use the musical staff as drawn above—that many lines all drawn together are hard to read. I just wanted to show where things come from and how they fit together.
We now write the Grand Staff as two separate, smaller staffs (or staves) as shown below. The line that represents middle C has disappeared, so that each new staff has only five lines and four spaces.
You can imagine middle C being just below the upper section of the staff, or just above the lower section. It can actually appear in both places. When music requires the middle C note, the writer adds a short line, called a leger line, just for that note. Two short leger lines are shown below with the labels 'middle C' to the left of the staff.
You may want to look at some printed music (especially for keyboard) and notice how it is written on sections of grand staff that look like the drawing above.
The notes written on the lower staff are notes that are lower than middle C, and the notes written on the upper staff are notes that are higher than middle C. Musical notes are placed on the lines of the staff, and in the spaces between the lines. Each line corresponds to a specific note name, as does each space. The two staves that make up the Grand Staff are shown below, with all the lines and the spaces between them labeled with the names of corresponding notes.
Since the middle C key is near the middle of the keyboard, a pianist can use the left hand to play the lower-staff notes, and the right-hand to play the upper staff notes. So, this way of showing where notes are musically also relates to where they are physically—at least for the keyboard player.
The upper and lower halves of the grand staff can be used separately, one without the other. If I only write down one of them though, you have no way to know which one I meant to use.
So, each of them has a special symbol and related name so they can never be mixed up. For the upper staff, the symbol is called the treble clef, and for the lower staff, the symbol is called the bass clef. The symbols are shown below as they would be written on the grand staff, and again as they would each appear separately.
The word 'clef' means 'key' or 'indicator', and indicates which half of the Grand Staff is being used. The treble clef symbol is actually a highly stylized letter G, if you imagine a handwritten, fancy script G. In fact, the symbol circles around the line of the staff that will be used for the note G. The treble clef is also called the G clef.
The bass clef symbol also has its history in a letter—the letter F. Imagine the two dots to be all that is left of the two horizontal lines of a capital F. The two dots lie on each side of the staff line used for the note F. The bass clef is also called the F clef.
Putting the Notes on the Staff
Each line and each space between two lines on the staff represents the location of a natural note.
We already learned where middle C is—it is one leger line below the staff for the treble clef, and one leger line above the staff for the bass clef. Remember, these two leger lines were at one time the very same line—the middle or center line on the grand staff, before we split the grand staff into two staves.
On the treble clef, I've shown all the natural notes beginning from the bottom with middle C, and moving up the staff with D, E, F, G, A, B and finally C again. I've shown the notes as open circles. The little circles are note heads, but I'll cover how notes are written in Part II. Right now I want to concentrate only on the placement of notes on the staff.
Naming the notes from left to right, notice that the first note after middle C is D, and that D is written on a 'space', in the case the space between the leger line we used for middle C (imagine the leger line is extended to the right), and the first, bottom line of the staff. D is of course followed by the note E, on the bottom line of the staff.
I stopped writing in notes when we reached C again—the note that is in the second space from the top of the staff. I could have continued with D, E and F, at which point we would have run out of staff.
Doing the same thing for the bass clef, beginning with middle C and moving downward with C, B, A, G, F, E, D and C—looks like this:
We can now use the accidentals mentioned earlier to do the same thing here that we did with the letter names of the notes; that is, we can expand the actual set of notes from just seven to 12 by altering the natural notes with accidentals.
When we altered the natural note names using accidentals, we placed the accidental after the note name. In music notation on the staff, the accidental is in front of the note. Here is a chromatic scale on the treble clef:
From left to right, the notes are: A – A# - B – C – C# - D – D# - E – F – F# - G – G# - A
I mentioned earlier when I talked about leger lines that I'd return to the topic and refine my comments. It's already past that time. You may have noticed the leger line that I used for that last A note above the staff shown above.
Earlier I said that we write the notes above middle C on the treble clef, and use a leger line below the staff to write middle C itself. I said that we write notes lower than middle C on the bass clef, using a single leger line above the staff if we need middle C.
The fact is, we use leger lines wherever we need them to extend the staff we are using. We can extend the staff upward or downward as far as we please using as many stacked legers as needed.
Special Comment about Guitar Notes on the Staff
Most music, even for a single instrument, uses notes that fall into both the bass and treble clefs. Most instruments have tonal range that goes well beyond a single staff (both above it and below it).
Rather than actually using both staves and writing the music for a single instrument on both, we normally use a single staff with multiple leger lines above and below it as needed.
The bass and treble clefs below show the range of a standard guitar, beginning on the open low E string, up to high D at fret 22 on the high E string
As you can see, the range of the guitar exceeds the range of both staves, but we'd still like to write all guitar music using just one of them. The solution is to write the notes one octave (or exactly eight notes) higher than they really are, and to write them using the treble clef with lots of leger lines.
Look again at the first note above on the bass clef. It's E. It's the actual note that you play on your guitar with the open 6th string. If you move it up eight notes to the next higher E, it looks like this:
Here is a brain challenge for the day. If you wanted to write this same note but using the treble clef instead, what would it look like? Well, you would need one leger line below the treble clef for middle C, another one below that to get down to A, a third one below that to go down to F. The space below that third leger is our friend, the low E.
I showed above where the guitar's high A, at fret 17 on the 1st string would 'correctly' appear on the treble clef. Where will it be when we move the real note up eight notes to the next higher A? The high A for the guitar will then appear on a 6th leger line above the treble clef!
Here is the entire range of a 6-string, 22 fret guitar in standard tuning, with all notes written one octave higher than they really are—the standard method for guitar music.
Special Note. The staff shown above is accompanied by a section of guitar tablature. Tablature, or just "tab" for short, is a graphical way of showing how to play a note on a stringed instrument. The tab above depicts the six strings of a guitar, and has nothing to do with a musical staff, even though it does look like one. As an example, the first three numbers of the tab above are 0, 1 and 3, and they appear on the tab line that means string 6. The number '0' just means play the open string (without fretting it). The number '1' means play string 6 at the first fret, and so on. The note that corresponds to each string and fret combination indicated in the tab is directly above the tab number, on the music staff. Tab is used for many string instruments having frets, such as electric bass and banjo.
Summary and Exercises
SUMMARY
Musicians needed to share their music with other musicians, perform music they had never heard, and record their compositions when there is no way to record the performances themselves. Over many, many decades, they developed a standard language of musical notation to meet the need. In this paper I dealt with the ideas of pitch, musical notes and note names, and related notes and their names to the keyboard and fretboard.
The musical staff shows how notes relate to one another in terms of pitch. The treble, or G clef, identifies the staff as being the upper half of the Grand Staff. This staff represents notes that are generally Middle C or higher. The bass, or F clef, identifies the staff as being the lower half of the Grand Staff. This staff represents notes that are generally lower than Middle C. We usually need to extend both staffs with leger lines to show notes that are both lower and higher than those on the staff.
In Music Notation Basics, Part I, I compared the staff to a graph, with the vertical placement of notes corresponding the relative pitch of those notes. You can think of Part I as having taken a 'vertical', up-down view of the staff. In Part II, I will cover one more pitch-related piece of notation: key signatures. But after that, Part II will take a more 'horizontal', left-right approach to the staff that will include rhythm-related ideas such as meter, measures, time signatures and as I promised in this article, details about the writing of notes themselves.
Please join your fellow iBreathemusic members in the forum to discuss this article - we welcome your questions and suggestions.
Finally, these exercises will help you get familiar with the bass and treble clefs, the relationship between them, and how they are extended using legers.
EXERCISES
1. Beginning with 'A' and ending with 'A', write out the note names of the chromatic scale, using only natural notes and sharps.
2. Beginning with 'B' and ending with 'B', write out the note names of the chromatic scale, using only natural notes and flats.
3. Below is a short section of piano keyboard. By remembering which two pairs of natural notes have no sharp or flat altered note separating them, label the keys with their corresponding note names using only natural notes and flats.
4. Same exercise as above, but with a different section of the keyboard. Use only naturals and sharps.
5. On the grand staff below, write in the clefs for the upper and lower staves. Make sure that the spiral portion of the treble clef encircles (and the bass clef brackets) the correct lines of their respective staves.
6. Write in the letter names of the natural notes that appear on the treble clef below. Also, place a circle around Middle C.
7. Write in the letter names of the natural notes that appear on the bass clef below. Also, place a circle around Middle C.
8. Reading leger line notes.
a) Name the following treble clef natural notes.
b) Name the following bass clef natural notes.
c) Name the following treble clef altered notes.
d) Name the following bass clef altered notes.
ANSWERS TO THE EXERCISES
1. A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, and A
2. B, C, Db, D, Eb, E, F, Gb, G, Ab, A, Bb and B
3.
4.
5.
6. From left to right: B, E, G, A, G, G, Middle C
7. From left to right, A, E, G, F, B, G, Middle C
8. a) C, A, F, A, E, C
b) A, E, C, G, E, C
c) F#, Bb, Eb, Bb, G#, Eb
d) F#, Eb, C#, Bb, F#, Bb