A Musician's Primer

Music is an expressivity that consists of melody, harmony, rhythm, and secondarily of intensity and timbre. Most of our later work will be in melody and harmony, though at first rhythm and meter, as well as Music's other ingredients, will be given some attention.

What is pitch? Pitch is the human reaction to vibrations in the air. In order to experience the sound of a middle C, something must vibrate at a specific fast rate of speed. Those vibrations then disturb the air molecules in our ocean of air. The disturbed air molecules then vibrate our ear drum, and our brain interprets the information as pitch sensation.

Pitch is made up of Hertz (Hz), or regular vibrations (cycles) per second. The note A, just under middle C, moves at 220 Hz. The note A an octave higher is 440 Hz. The A yet an octave higher is 880 Hz. Notice how an octave jump doubles, or halves, the number of Hz. The sensation of a specific pitch is dependent upon regular vibration. Noise would be irregular Hz. All of this can be demonstrated on an oscilliscope in a physics lab.

What is harmony? The notion of harmony is closely related to the concept of a chord and successions of chords. A chord combines pitches to achieve a desired sense of resonance, and harmony results from chords. Whereas two simultaneous pitches are considered an interval, three or more constitute chords. However, in a very broad sense, continuous intervals can be referred to as harmony. Other related words are sonority, sonance, sonant, soniferous, harmonious, and harmonistic. Attention to harmony must necessarily be delayed until interval spelling has been studied.

What is rhythm? Rhythm is the perception and appreciation of asymmetric events against a real or imagined even plotting. However, for the time being, rhythm for us will be the relative measurement of time and given symbols -- how long a certain note is in relation to surrounding notes.

Other ingredients of music are identified by musicologist Jan La Rue as S O U N D. Intensity is strength or loudness. Timbre is the uniqueness of the sound, dependant on constant and transient overtones, attacks of notes and other elusive components -- how can one can distinguish the sound of an oboe from a violin? Intensity and Timbre will receive less attention in the lessons.

Our work is dependent upon your knowledge of the keyboard, not in a bravura, but rather in a graphic sense. Be able to picture it in your mind. (Ideally you should be enrolled in class piano, a series of courses which efficiently eliminate keyboard fear.) Each of the twelve different black and white keys on the keyboard can have two or more identities. For instance, the key most often called F-natural, could in some instances be an E-sharp, or even a G-double flat. The word enharmonic refers a pitch which may be spelled more than one way. E-sharp and F-natural are enharmonic. In our theory work we will be involved with orthography, a system of correct spelling. In the world of words we have to know when to spell the same sound properly (to, too, two-----so, sew-----through, threw). And so it is in music, -- for instance, when a B-sharp would be more appropriate than a C-natural.

More basics

Music uses seven natural pitches represented by the letters A - G. These can be seen as seven ascending white notes on the keyboard, and as locations on the stave, depending on the clef being used. Modern music is written on the five-line staff/stave, the pentagram. (This evolved historically from as few as one and two lines. The four-line stave, the tetragram was/is used in Gregorian Chant, and a six-line stave was used in English Harpsichord music.)

The two principal clefs in modern use are the treble (G clef) and bass (F clef). Notice how these symbols identify the locations of G and F.

Note symbols:

About 800 or 900 years ago our system of note symbols began to evolve. Heartbeat speed was at first indicated by what was called a maxima. (Illustrated below.) As things developed, a very basic triple meter was made possible by a continuing successions of long (longa) and short (breve) notes: long - short - long - short. At this point in history the longa represented the heartbeat speed. As notation grew, the heartbeat was later represented by breves, and shorter notes were indicated by semibreves, with yet even faster notes indicated by minimas. Evolution continued, and by the l600s the heartbeat was represented by a crotchet -- a practice which is still the norm. Here is an illustration of the various note symbols and their equivalent rests. Some of their names are included along with (and most importantly) their numerical symbols.

The l is also known as a whole-note, the 2 as a half-note, and the 4 as a quarter-note, etc. Additionally, in many English writings a quarter note is a crotchet, an 8th note is a quaver, a l6th note a semiquaver, a 32nd a demisemiquaver, and a 64th note a hemidemisemiquaver.

As one moves from left to right on the above illustration, each note symbol is worth half of the preceding. In an abstract sense there is no inherent speed connected to any given symbol. Ideally any one of them could represent the heartbeat. And once having chosen that value, all the others then would assume their relative speeds. But as was mentioned above, musicians of the last 400 years seem to prefer the quarter-note as a heartbeat speed.

The seven basic/natural pitches A to G can be raised or lowered in pitch by preceding the note with an accidental. They are: the sharp, the flat, the double sharp and the double flat. A natural sign is necessary in order to cancel out a previous status.