Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Musical Wednesday: The Musical Alphabet

Otherwise known as Musical Notation. Basically, it's the letters A through G that correspond with certain tones and pitches. Once you reach G it starts at A again going up the scale and pitch. Going down, it's just backwards going lower in pitch. Along with the first 7 letters of the alphabet, the musical alphabet consists of sharps and flats. I'll try to explain them all very simply while using the piano as an example: All of the letters that correspond to the pitches are on the white keys which are called the "neutral". It's important to know this, especially if you are reading music. Because of these, you will learn to read music! Once you know the note names, I'll teach you how to find them on the staff!

When you are going up the scale, starting from white key A, you will go to white key B. In between white key A and white key B is a black key. The black key can either be A# or Bb. The # = sharp, which simply raises the pitch of a note by half a step. The b = flat, which simply lowers the pitch of a note by half a step. Except between B and C and E and F there are NO black keys in between! So if you are raising the pitch half a note, you go from B to C naturally.

So there you have it, you now have some knowledge of reading music -ish. Not really. LOL. I just showed you guys the note names. But the reading of music will come next week! How did you guys fare? Sorry it was short, I thought I'd let you guys do some thinking and maybe if you guys have a piano or anything around you can take a look! Let me know what questions you guys have in the comments and I'll try to incorporate them into next weeks Musical Wednesday!


2 comments

  1. I miss playing piano so much, I should go back to that..

    Also, how do you explain all this for guitar? Haha I could never read guitar music..

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh! I will definitely show you how to read music on the guitar as well! It'll be it's own little post and I'll write it for next week! Thanks for the inquiry!!! =]

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Maira Gall