Today I have continued studying the music notation as I was doing before, now that we know the Treble Clef and the Bass Clef. The Treble and Bass clefs are separated by one line that is the middle C and two spaces that are the B below middle C and the D above middle C.
The Grand Staff
Now you might be asking where are these notes located on the piano?!
The notes of the lines and spaces on the Treble and Bass Clefs are associated with the white keys on the piano in the above image by means of the lines drawn the clef notes to the matching piano key. You can see that the note that connects the two clefs is a C in between both clefs. This note is drawn as an extended ledger line above the Bass clef and below the Treble clef. Which one is used in any case depends upon which hand is being assigned to play the note C.
This C is very special because it is called Middle C. It is the typical first located note that many beginner piano students are asked to locate and play. It is therefore often used as a very important reference point in piano instruction.
We can go above and below the grand staff by means of adding more ledger lines. If we drew another line all the way across the staff it would be visually confusing. Instead we just draw a line for the note head to use where it is needed.
In order indicate the black keys, which are the notes “in between” the white keys, we use symbols in front of the notes we want to alter.
The symbol to play note higher (or musically one half-step higher) in pitch and thus one key to the right is called a sharp and looks like the number symbol #. The symbol to play one note lower (or musically one half-step lower) is called a flat and looks like a lower case letter b. We put these symbols in directly in front of the notes we want to make sharp or flat.
After making a note sharp or flat if we want to play it in its original unaltered position again later in the same measure (or piece) we use another symbol called a natural sign, which looks like a little slanted rectangle with some extended lines. This effectively “cancels out” the previous sharp or flat sign.
Accidentals – Sharps, Flats and Naturals
This also means that any given black key (or white key depending upon how the music is written and in what key signature) can be labeled as a sharp or flat. This ability to identify one key as sharp or flat is called enharmonic naming. The determining factor in which symbol is used is whether or not the key signature of the song uses sharps or flats. The idea is to maintain consistency with visual and conceptual clarity. This is done to make the musical alphabet letters in any given musical piece as easy as possible to read. So in the key of G major for example, we use the letters:
G, A, B, C, D, E and F-sharp.
We do not use:
G, A, B, C, D, E and G-flat.
This is because the first does not duplicate letters and thus is easier to see and quickly grasp. Therefore it is easier to think about and understand.
This is the location of the sharps or flats on the piano.
Sharps and Flats on the Piano
Music notation shows what notes to play by placing a dot on a line of space of the staff. In order to know when to play those notes and for how long we have to learn the musical notation symbols for rhythm. This is frequently the hardest part of learning to read music for beginners. So take your time and be patient.
Essentially rhythmic notation is a matter of fractions. All the symbols represent divisions of smaller or larger relative lengths. The largest value is the whole note, which gets 4 counts (1, 2, 3, 4). Then we divide it into two equal halves and get, appropriately, half notes, which get 2 counts (1, 2). Here are the divisions:
Whole note – a whole measure of 4 beats – 4 counts
Half note – a half of a measure of 4 beats – 2 counts
Quarter note – a quarter of a measure of 4 beats – 1 count
Eighth note – an eighth of a measure of 4 beats – 1/2 of a count
Sixteenth note – a sixteenth of a measure of 4 beats – 1/4 of a count
Thirty-second note – a thirty-second of a measure of 4 beats – 1/8 of a count
And so on. We can keep on diving these forever, but they really have so practical application probably past 1/128th notes. Rarely will you see anything smaller than 1/16th notes. Here’s an image to illustrate these rhythmic divisions and how their symbols look.
Rhythm Notes
Note that a 1/8th note has a “flag” on it’s stem and if more than one 1/8th note occurs right after another, then their “flags” can be drawn as a “beam” connecting their stems. Similarly with 1/16th notes, except they have two “flags”, therefore two “beams”. For each smaller division add a “flag” or a “beam” to connect adjacent similarly rhythm valued notes.
Here they are on the musical staff with their proper grouping amounts.
Reading Rhythms