music theory for musicians and normal people by toby w.

rush

Notation: Pitch music notation is the art of

recording music in written form.

##g#F#d#DD#SS#d#Mf#SSg#F
liz phair
what makes you happy [melody from chorus]
whitechocolatespaceegg (1998)

modern music notation is a product

of centuries of transformation... the system of musical notation
and it is neither efficient nor intuitive! we use is essentially a stylized

graph of pitch versus time.

pitch is the highness or

lowness of a sound.
&
for example, a flute has the five lines on which notes

pitch

pitch
a high pitch, while a tuba appear is called a staff.
has a low pitch.
time
a note is a
written representation
of a particular pitch.

notation is based on the piano keyboard;

lines and spaces on the staff represent F g a b c d e F g a b c d e
the white notes on the keyboard.
the white notes on the keyboard
are labeled with letters from A to G.

& w w
B B w w
to display notes
outside the

?
staff, we use
shortened
staff lines
called treble clef
ledger lines. alto clef
tenor clef
bass clef
the clef determines what notes each staff
line corresponds to. the four modern middle c is the c that is closest to
clefs are shown here; the note displayed the middle of the piano keyboard.

on each staff corresponds to middle c.

these symbols are placed to

To notate the The double sharp raises the
the left of the note that they

#
black notes note by two half steps.
affect, and they apply to all the
on the piano notes on that line or space
keyboard, we use for the rest of the measure.

& b n # n
accidentals, The sharp raises the

n
which alter the note by one half step.
note by one or
two half steps.
The natural cancels out

b
a half step is any previous accidental.
the distance
between two
adjacent keys The flat lowers the
on the piano note by one half step.

keyboard, F g a b c d e F g a b c d e
regardless
of what color The double flat lowers two notes which have the same
the keys are. the note by two half steps. pitch (for example, f sharp and
g flat) are called enharmonics.
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