Lesson 10: Notes and Rhythms part II

Reading sheet music is like reading a foreign language. There are rules and patterns that must be followed for the music to sound pleasing to the ear and so the musician can interpret the music correctly in order to perform it.

Before we get to the music, we must first know how to write it correctly, understand the notes, and know how to organize it.

To learn about how to correctly label a note, head to: http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-is-c4.html

To learn about clefs, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/12/lesson-2-staffs-clefs-and-lines-oh-my.html

To learn about the major scale and whole and half steps, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-3-major-and-minor-scale.html

To learn about key signatures, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-4-key-signatures.html

To learn about notes and their rhythms in simple meter, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-5-notes-and-rhythm-part-i.html

To learn about simple time signatures, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-6-simple-time-signatures.html

To learn about rests in simple time, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-7-rests.html

To learn about ties and slurs, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-8-ties-and-slurs.html

To learn about dotted notes and rests: head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-9-dotty-good-time.html

Now we will learn about compound time.

Compound time is when meter is divided into groups of three, instead of groups of two [see lesson 5: notes and rhythms part 1 above]

The beat note in compound time is divisible by three. This is why all beat notes in compound time are dotted. A dotted note divides into three eighth notes.

In compound time, the numerator of the time signature will always be the number of beats in a measure times three[hence compound,].  The denominator is the number representing the notes used in the division of the beat note.   If the beat note is the dotted quarter note, the denominator will be 8 because the beat note [dotted quarter] divides into three eighth notes. Three division notes added together make one beat note.  If you know the beat note, division note, and the number of beats per measure, you can determine the time signature, and if you know the time signature, you can also determine the number of beats per measure, beat note, and division note.

Lets do some practice:
1) In 6/8 time, what is the number of beats in a measure? What is the beat note?

2) What time signature has 3 beats in a measure, and it's beat note is a dotted eighth note?

3) How many dotted quarter notes are in 12/8 time?
b) Is the dotted quarter note the beat note or the division note? How do you know?

4) What is the division note in 9/16 time?

5) Is 3/8  in simple or compound time? Why or why not?

After you complete those, here is a display of some common compound time signatures.

Now we know:
- the difference between simple and compound time signatures
- how to identify the number of beats, beat note, and division note from the time signature
- how to identify the time signature while knowing the number of beats, beat note and division note.

This concludes the lesson for.... oh wait!!!! You probably want those answers to the questions, now don't you! See, I didnt tell you that the answers would be down here because then you would have come straight down here for the answers instead of trying them, or at least, I hope so.

Answers:
1) 6/8 time: there are two beats in a measure, and the beat note is the dotted quarter note.
2) 9/16 : 3 beats of 3 sixteenth notes each= 9/16
3) 4: dotted quarter note is the beat note of 12/8 time, and 12/3=4
b) the dotted quarter note is the beat note because 8 is the denominator, so the eighth note is the division note. 3 division notes make a beat note, and three eighth notes makes a dotted quarter note.
4) sixteenth note: 16 is the denominator, so the sixteenth note is the division note.
5) simple time: the numerator in compound time must be divisible of three, but NOT 3. time signatures with a numerator of 2, 3, or 4 are in simple time.

This concludes our lesson for today.

Lesson 9: A Dotty Good Time

Reading sheet music is like reading a foreign language. There are rules and patterns that must be followed for the music to sound pleasing to the ear and so the musician can interpret the music correctly in order to perform it.

Before we get to the music, we must first know how to write it correctly, understand the notes, and know how to organize it.

To learn about how to correctly label a note, head to: http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-is-c4.html

To learn about clefs, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/12/lesson-2-staffs-clefs-and-lines-oh-my.html

To learn about the major scale and whole and half steps, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-3-major-and-minor-scale.html

To learn about key signatures, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-4-key-signatures.html

To learn about notes and their rhythms in simple meter, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-5-notes-and-rhythm-part-i.html

To learn about simple time signatures, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-6-simple-time-signatures.html

To learn about rests in simple time, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-7-rests.html

To learn about ties and slurs, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-8-ties-and-slurs.html

Now we will learn about dotted notes and rests.

A dot in music is exactly what one would think it is: a dot. It's function is to extend the length of time that the note it is attached with is sounding by 50%.

If a quarter note sound for one beat, a dotted quarter note sounds for one and a half beats, or the equvalent of a tied quarter-eighth note.

1.5 beats=1+.5= 1+[1*1/2]

Here is another example:

If a half note sounds for two beats, adding a dot will increase it's duration by 50%.

2+[2*1/2]= 2+1=3 beats

Now it is very impotant that the dot come after  the note. Think of the dot as adding and additional half value to the end of the quantity that comes before it. The dot won't make sense until after you know what the original value is that you are modifying.

It is also possible to have more than one dot after a note. That second dot will add an additional half value of the dot before it.  The second dot in front of a dotted half note will add an additional [5*1/2]=1/4 of a beat to the note making it [1+.5+.25] = 1.75 beats long.

Here is a chart of various notes, and their dotted lengths.

So a dot adds half of the length of the symbol directly before it, whether it be a note or a dot, to the entire duration of the pitch.

Now that we understand ties [from lesson 8] and dots, we can now move onto the second form of time: compond time. [see lesson 10]

This concludes our lesson for today.

Lesson 8: Ties and Slurs

Reading sheet music is like reading a foreign language. There are rules and patterns that must be followed for the music to sound pleasing to the ear and so the musician can interpret the music correctly in order to perform it.

Before we get to the music, we must first know how to write it correctly, understand the notes, and know how to organize it.

To learn about how to correctly label a note, head to: http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-is-c4.html

To learn about clefs, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/12/lesson-2-staffs-clefs-and-lines-oh-my.html

To learn about the major scale and whole and half steps, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-3-major-and-minor-scale.html

To learn about key signatures, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-4-key-signatures.html

To learn about notes and their rhythms in simple meter, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-5-notes-and-rhythm-part-i.html

To learn about simple time signatures, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-6-simple-time-signatures.html

To learn about rests in simple time, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-7-rests.html


Now we will learn about ties and slurs.

Ties are the addition of the lengths of two or more notes with the same pitch. Two tied quarter notes would be equal to one half note.

Q: Why not just write a half note instead of tying two quarter notes?
A: In situations where a composer wants to write a half note, but cannot write it because it violates music-writing rules, such as crossing a bar (a bar is a line that divides two measures), tying two quarter notes sounds like a half note, but doesn't violate any of the writing rules.

This is what a tie looks like in musical form:

A slur is a tie between two or more notes with different pitch. 

Slurs add a different texture to the timbre(quality of the sound) of the music. Instead of each note sounding separately, slurs sustain the sound through 2 or more notes without spacing. *



*this sound is much more noticeable when heard in an wind instrument (any instrument that needs exhaled breath to make sound. ex: trumpet, clarinet, tuba....)

This concludes our lesson for today.

Useful Shortcuts When Writing about Music

It has been a pain in the... nether-region (I'm not supposed to swear) trying to write about music online and having to manually put in sharps, flats and natural signs from Microsoft word. If you are wanting to copy these symbols from this page, go right ahead, however, there are some shortcuts in Word that you can use to get these to pop up, so here they are:

“♪” – type ‘266a’ then hit alt-X

“♫” –type ‘266b’ then hit alt-X

“♬” –type ‘266c’ then hit alt-X

“♭”–type ‘266d’ then hit alt-X

“♮”–type ‘266e’ then hit alt-X

“♯”–type ‘266f’ then hit alt-X

(To be honest, this is as much for me as it is for you guys, this way i dont have to search the web for the codes over and over again)

Unfortunately I havent been able to get these shortcuts to work in blogger yet. (I'm working on it though. If anybody has already figured it out, comment and let me know!!!! )

Lesson 7: Rests

Reading sheet music is like reading a foreign language. There are rules and patterns that must be followed for the music to sound pleasing to the ear and so the musician can interpret the music correctly in order to perform it.

Before we get to the music, we must first know how to write it correctly, understand the notes and rhythms, and know how to organize it.

To learn about how to correctly label a note, head to: http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-is-c4.html

To learn about clefs, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/12/lesson-2-staffs-clefs-and-lines-oh-my.html

To learn about the major scale,the minor scale, whole steps, and half steps, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-3-major-and-minor-scale.html

To learn about key signatures, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-4-key-signatures.html

To learn about notes and their rhythms in simple meter, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-5-notes-and-rhythm-part-i.html

To learn about simple time signatures, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-6-simple-time-signatures.html

Now we will learn about rests in simple time.

Music is not just sound. Music also includes the space between sound. Ears and minds get overwhelmed listening to, and trying to play constant sound. There is a time and place for constant sound, however rests not only allow for processing the previous musical phrase, they also provide places to show the dynamics of the music, and allow the musician to get a breath every now and then. (This is of extreme importance to wind instrumentalists in particular, who use controlled, exhaled breath to play their instruments)

Rests are also specific in their length of time. For every note, there exists a rest with an equivalent amount of time. For example, a quarter rest is equal in length to a quarter note.

Here is a chart showing the rests and their equal-length notes:

As you can tell, there are some similar characteristics between the note and their rest counterpart. The eighth note and rest both have one flag. Likewise, the sixteenth note and rest both have 2 flags. The quarter rest is commonly used, however this looks more like a squigly line. The half and whole rests are difficult to differenciate without practice. The half note is a small solid rectangle above the 3rd line of the staff and looks like a top hat (the "brim" is part of the 3rd line of the staff, showing it's relative position) The whole rest is a rectangle directly underneath the fourth line of the staff, and looks like a basket (the top of the basket is part of the fourth line of the staff, showing it's relative position.) These you will simply have to memorize which is which. The way I remembered when I was learning: you can only fit half a lunch in a hat, but you can fit a whole one in a picnic basket.

Which rests do you use then? You could use 2 eighth rests instead of one quarter rest, however there is a correct way to notate rests. Lets review: In your time signature, (we will be using 4\4 for this example), the number on top is the number of beats in a measure, and the bottom number is what note gets one beat. Here we have four beats in a measure, and the quarter note is one beat.  Say we have this:

In measure 1, we have 2 quarter notes and a half note. In measure 2 we have one quarter note, one quarter rest, and one half rest. Why not 3 quarter rests? We use as few rests as we can, but still completing each beat. In measure 3 we have 5 descending eighth notes, one eighth rest, and a quarter rest. Why not have a quarter rest then the eighth rest? The eighth rest is the other half of the lone eighth note and that beat must be completed before another beat can be notated.  In measure 4 we have 3 quarter notes and a quarter rest. This concept will be explained in more detail in a later lesson.

What would happen if a particular part rests for multiple consecutive measures? It would waste paper to notate out each measure with a full-value rest (not to mention be tedious and inaccurate to count through). Good thing there is a shortcut to notating muliple measures of consecutive rests.

This is how one would notate 15 consecutive measures of rest. No matter what time signature you are in, the number (X) displayed above the span tells you that there are X  measures of rest.

We have learned:
- what a rest is
-how to identify commonly seen rests in simple meter
-how to complete a beat with rests
-how to notate multiple measures of consecutive rest.

This concludes our lesson for today.

童话："Fairytale" by Michael Wong

童话， or "Tong Hua", is the third solo album by Michael Wong, a Malaysian singer, and was released 8 years ago tomorrow, on January 21st, 2005. It is his strongest single, and is arguably the most successful Chinese language song of the 21st century (so far). Wong became the first Malaysian to win four awards in the Hong Kong TVB8 Golden Music Awards(comparable to the U.S. Grammy awards) in 2005: Best Composition, Best Composer/Artist, Top Ten Songs of the Year, and Best of the Year's Top Ten Songs.

It is a love song, and could be sung from the point of view of either guy or girl, although it is from the guy's perspective in most videos.

The official music video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOeFSgQEsMQ
The official Jason Chen/ J Rice version [English/Chinese cover] is here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uuh_IfVtJ3M

This video has been highly debated. Wong is performing the song at a concert, and it's also being sent over phone to a girl in a hospital. Throughout the video, one comes to realize that the girl is probably his girlfriend, and is very sick. She is put in the hospital after she has an nosebleed and collapses [speculated to have lung cancer]. In the voiceovers at the end, she says in Chinese: "When the whole world ignored me, only you never left me alone." It is unknown whether the music video is based on a real-life story.

I'm not a huge fan of the music video, but the story is touching and I ♥ LOVE ♥ the song.


Without further to do, here are the lyrics:

♫忘了有多久再沒聽到你
對我說你最愛的故事
我想了很久 我開始慌了
是不是我又做錯了什麼

你哭著對我說 童話裡都是騙人的
我不可能是你的王子
也許你不會懂 從你說愛我以後
我的天空 星星都亮了

我願變成童話裡 你愛的那個天使
張開雙手變成翅膀守護你
你要相信 相信我們會像童話故事裡

幸福和快樂是結局

一起寫我們的結局♫

And for those of you who can't read Chinese characters (I'm assuming you're in the majority here,) here is the pronunciation of the Chinese (otherwise known as pinyin. The English equivalent would be phonetics) and an English translation.

Pinyin:

♫wang le you duo jiu

 zai mei ting dao ni
dui wo shuo ni

zui ai de gu shi

wo xiang le hen jiu

wo kai shi huang le
shi bu shi wo you

 zuo cuo le shen me

ni ku zhe dui wo shuo
tong hua li dou shi pian ren de
wo bu ke neng
 shi ni de wang zi
ye xü ni bu hui dong
 cong ni shuo ai wo yi hou
wo de tian kong
xing xing dou liang le

wo yüan bian chen
tong hua li
ni ai de na ge tian shi
zhang kai shuang shou
 bian chen chi bang shou hu ni
ni yao xiang xin
 xiang xin wo men hui xiang tong hua gu shi li
xin fu he kuai le shi jie jü

yi qi xie wo men de jie jü♫

English translation:

(These aren't the official English lyrics, but they are best translation according to my Chinese teacher, who introduced me to this song. After listening to multiple versions and renditions of this song on YouTube countless times, I concur.) This is the translation from the Jason Chen/ J Rice versions.

♫
V1

Don't know how long

its been a while since
you told me... your favorite story.

Its been on my mind
driving me crazy
am i the reason
you're crying now?

V2
I see the tears in your eyes
they tell me you don't believe
that I cant be...your prince charming

maybe you can't understand
but when you said you loved me
my life was changed
and I wish you could see

Chorus:
I'm willing to be the one
and the angel that you love
with open arms I'll always be there
you must believe
that you and me
can end up happily
with our own fairytale story

End:
writing our fairytale story♫

Hope you enjoy!!!!!

Q: Are guy flute players gay???

A: NO!!!!

I am proud to be the girlfriend of the only guy flautist(flute player) in the school.

If you think about it, they are actually quite clever. Flute players are mostly girls. It must be torture to be constantly surrounded by girls everyday. Especially in marching band, where you do alot of section work, where he will have no competition whatsoever. Pretty clever indeed.

Lesson 6: Simple Time Signatures

Reading sheet music is like reading a foreign language. There are rules and patterns that must be followed for the music to sound pleasing to the ear and so the musician can interpret the music correctly in order to perform it.

Before we get to the music, we must first know how to write it correctly, understand the notes, and know how to organize it.

To learn about how to correctly label a note, head to: http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-is-c4.html

To learn about clefs, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/12/lesson-2-staffs-clefs-and-lines-oh-my.html

To learn about the major scale and whole and half steps, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-3-major-and-minor-scale.html

To learn about key signatures, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-4-key-signatures.html

To learn about notes and their rhythms in simple meter, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-5-notes-and-rhythm-part-i.html

Now that we know how to count notes and their rhythms, we can now understand meter, or the relationship between rhythm and time in music.

Music has 2 aspects. Pitch, the highness or lowness of the sound, and time, which is shown in rhythm, or how the sound is notated so that their starting and duration is notated and predictable.

We know the note relationships from Lesson 5: notes and rhythms part I, however, we still dont know how long a whole note, and therefore any of the other notes, are. This is because the duration of the notes depends on the time signature, or how many beats are in a measure (partion of music)

A time signature consists of two notes written vertically, like in a fraction, with one important exception. A time signature does NOT have a line seperating the top and bottom notes!!!!!

The top number shows how many beats are in a measure. If the top number is 4, then there are four beats in a measure. In simple meter, the top number will always be either 2, 3, or 4.

The bottom note indicates what note gets the beat. If the number is 4, then the quarter note equals one beat. If the number is 16, then the sixteenth note gets the beat. this number will always corespond to one of the notes listed in Lesson 5: notes and rhythms part I.

Now using any of these rules, you can create a simple time signature. These are some of the simple time signatures commonly seen in music from the Common Practice Period. (1650- circa 1900+)

This concludes our lesson for today.

Lesson 5: Notes and Rhythm part I

Reading sheet music is like reading a foreign language. There are rules and patterns that must be followed for the music to sound pleasing to the ear and so the musician can interpret the music correctly in order to perform it.

Before we get to the music, we must first know how to write it correctly, understand the notes, and know how to organize it.

To learn about how to correctly label a note, head to: http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-is-c4.html

To learn about clefs, head to:

http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/12/lesson-2-staffs-clefs-and-lines-oh-my.html

To learn about the major scale and whole and half steps, head to:

http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-3-major-and-minor-scale.html

To learn about key signatures, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-4-key-signatures.html

Now we will learn about the notes themselves. There are many different kinds of notes, and each note has a different length of time it is sounding. These are the notes commonly seen in simple meter(time).

A whole note is the base for all other notes. It looks like this:

A half note is just that, half of a whole note. It looks like this:

Notice how a half note looks like a whole note, but with a stem. (all stems can go either up or down, depending on it's position on the staff and in relation to other nearby notes, but we'll get to that in a later lesson.)

A quarter note is the most commonly seen note in music and is worth 1/4 of a whole note. . It is also the most commonly used base note for time signatures.( see lesson 6) It looks like this:

See how a quarter note is like a half note, but with the center filled in.

An eighth note is an 1/8 of a whole note. ( starting to see a pattern here????) It looks like this:

It's just like a quarter note, but with a little flag on the end of the stem.


Finally, the sixteenth note. What portion of a whole note do you think it is worth??? If you answered 1/16 of a whole note, you must be a genius? or you probably caught on to the pattern of the note names. The people who named these notes must have been pretty straightforward in their descriptions. A sixteenth note looks like this:

It looks just like a quarter note, but unlike the eighth note, it has two flags on it's stem, showing it's half of an eighth note.

There are notes smaller than a sixteenth note, and theoretically there are an infinite number of notes, however no note has existed outside of theoretical land smaller than the sixty-fourth note.

These notes with flags may looks weird, even if you have seen music before. Do these look more familiar?

eighth notes



Sixteenth notes

 These are just like the other eighth and sixteenth notes, except there are several of them beamed together. Notice how the eighth notes, which have one flag, have one beam connecting them together; sixteenth notes have two flags and are connected together with two beams.

As you can see, all of these notes can fit into one whole note.

This diagram is called a note tree. It shows the relationship between each of these notes, and how many of a given type of note it would take to equal a whole note.

These are the most common notes found in simple meter. This concludes the lesson for today.

ValleyFest 2012 video

This is our Marching show 2012 "A Celtic Fanfare" at one of our last performances, ValleyFest 2012. (I finally found the video I promised back in, like, October)  This competition is hosted by West Des Moines Valley High School in Des Moines, Iowa, and is a bigger deal than State competition in regards to prestige and recognition. To get a high place at Valley is quite an honor indeed. Even though we did not get a very high place, our Directors were very pleased with our score and said that we did very well this season, especially marching so many "fresh meat" marchers and over 2/3 of our band being sophmores and freshman, (almost all who had no marching experience). This is our show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I0mdKUWMr0

This is the original youtube video, added by a Valleyfest judge/host person. Feel free to look up other bands performing at Valleyfest as well, they were all very good performances.

P.S. I'm down in the Pit (frontline percussion) I play the bells (high metallic "ting-y" sounding instrument doing alot of fast moving line parts) on the first and last piece(you'll know it when you hear it) , and the vibrophone on the ballad (you really can't hear me in the reccording due to the nature of the instrument).

Lesson #4- Key Signatures

Reading sheet music is like reading a foreign language. There are rules and patterns that must be followed for the music to sound pleasing to the ear and so the musician can interpret the music correctly in order to perform it.

Before we get to the music, we must first know how to write it correctly, and know how to organize it.

To learn about how to correctly label a note, head to: http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-is-c4.html

To learn about clefs, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/12/lesson-2-staffs-clefs-and-lines-oh-my.html

To learn about the major scale and whole and half steps, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-3-major-and-minor-scale.html

After reading those, the next hieroglyphic we need to interpret is the cluster of octothropes ( ♯ ), lowercase b's ( ♭), and the occasional natural ( ♮ ) known to musicians as the key signature.

An octothrope, ( ♯ ), in music is called a sharp, and raises the given note one half step. (from the given note on a piano to the very next key higher). C becomes C♯ and G becomes G♯. An italicised lowercase "b" in music is called a flat,  and lowers the given note one half step (from the given note on a piano to the very next key lower).

As we learned in lesson 1, every key has a letter and a number, and the white keys on a piano run in a certian order, A through G, then repeat. What are the names for the black keys then? The black keys are called accidentals because their pitch is not the same as the white keys to either side, and aren't usually in the key signature. The black keys sound pitchwise in between the two adjacent keys, and since there isnt a letter in between C and D, for example, what do you name the black key in between? The accidental has two names, depending on the key you are in. In the key, if D is lowered one half step, it becomes D♭, and if C is raised one half step, it becomes C♯. D♭and C♯ sound the same, but are written differently. Because of the W-W-1/2-W-W-W-1/2 pattern of the scale, and the rule that every letter is used, and none repeated except in octaves, the same pitch will be labeled differently.
If you are in a key signature with sharps, all of your notes in the major scale will either be natural (white key) or a sharp note. (F♯, C♯, etc. ) Conversely, if you are in a key signature with flats, all of your notes will either be natural or a flat ( B♭, E♭, etc.).

Its pretty daunting, even as an intermediate instrumentalist, to sit down to a piece of music only to see a key signature with more than 4 sharps or flats. However, with this simple trick that my music theory teacher taught me, anyone can read a key signature.

1) If there are no sharps or flats, the key is C major (or a minor).*
2) If there is only one flat, it is F major (or d minor)* (skip to #5 for flat keys, go to #3 for sharp keys)
 *these are the only two key signatures that you have to memorize, the rest will all follow the patterns given.
3) If your key is a sharp key, the order of the sharps from left to right is F, C, G, D, A, E, B.  The last sharp in the key signature (right-most sharp) is one half step lower than the key name. (if F# is the last sharp, G is one half step higher, and the key is G)
4) If the sharp key has more than 5 sharps, then the last sharp is one whole step lower than the key name (if E# is the last sharp, the key is F#)
5) If your key is a flat key, the order of flats is the exact opposite of the order of sharps: B, E, A, D, G, C, F. (bead, gcf) The second to last flat (from left to right) is the key name. (if E♭, the flat before is B♭and B♭is the key name)

These rules work for naming every major key signature!!!!!

This concludes our lesson for today.

Lesson #3- The Major and Minor Scale



Reading sheet music is like reading a foreign language. There are rules and patterns that must be followed for the music to sound pleasing to the ear and so the musician can interpret the music correctly in order to perform it.

Before we get to the music, we must first know how to write it correctly, and know how to organize it.

To learn about how to correctly label a note, head to: http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-is-c4.html

To learn about clefs, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/12/lesson-2-staffs-clefs-and-lines-oh-my.html

Now we will learn about the major scale, but to do that, we must first understand the difference between whole and half steps.

A half step is the difference in pitch from any key to the very next key(black and white keys included) up or down on a key board. It is the smallest musical interval. From C to C# is an ascending half step; from F to E is also a half step, but is descending.

A whole step is simply two adjacent half steps, and is the difference in pitch from any key to the key two keys away. From C to D is an ascending whole step (skips C#); from G# to F# is a descending whole step (skips G).

Now that we have learned what a half and whole step are, we can now fully understand what a whole scale is.

A scale is a series of notes in a pattern. There are two main types of scales used in modern music today: major (happy sounding) and minor (sad sounding) scales.

A major scale is a series of 8 notes made up of whole (W) and half (H) steps and played in a specific sequence.  It's pattern is whole step-whole step-half step-whole step-whole step-whole step-half step, or W-W-H-W-W-W-H.

 It looks like this:

...and it sounds like this**:

Do you hear how this sounds happy and upbeat? If you do, great!!! This is what most music you hear today is written in, a major key. If you don't hear it quite yet, don't worry, it will be easier once you hear the minor scale.

A minor scale is a series of eight notes and is also made up of whole (W) and half (H) steps and played in a specific sequence, however it's pattern is w-h-w-w-h-w-w.
It looks like this:

 

...and it sounds like this**:

Do you hear how this sounds more melancholy and more somber than the first one? When you see a sad scene in a movie, like when one of the important characters dies, or when something bad just happened, you hear sad music. This music is in a minor key.

With either of these patterns, you can now create a scale starting on any note!!!! Just use the pattern and count half or whole steps to find each note. Once you have eight notes, if you got back to a note with the same name, but one octave higher, and it sounds right, then you know you have done it correctly.

Now you know how to tell the difference between a major and minor key when hearing it and seeing their patterns and how they work.You also know how to write a scale in any key signature (starting on any note).

This concludes the lesson for today.

*These were recordings of me playing a C major scale and an a natural minor scale on my flute, and FYI, I-pods make mp4 recordings and blogger only accepts video files. You would not BELIEVE how annoying these were to put on, although once I got them reformatted correctly, (thanks to my brother Nathan's help) they actually, (FINALLY) worked.  I will definitely plan out more time to devote to getting videos working next time I add them to my blog posts.