CLEFS, NOTES & INTERVALS

INTRODUCTION

We spent our first lesson looking at the horizontal dispersal of music as a concept called RHYTHM (how sound and silence is measured out over time). Now, we will look at the vertical dispersal of music which is referred to as PITCH. All instruments (including singing voice) produce pitches which are tones of sound sustained at a consistent frequency and scientifically qualified by Hertz (vibrations per second). To learn more about the science of music, check out this page: Science of Music.

NOTES

The pitches used in Western Music Theory are labeled as NOTES. Each note has a name (represented by a letter of the alphabet) that helps the music reader understand what sound should come out of their instrument as well as understand the note’s relationship to other notes around it. Because the major scale in Western Music Theory only has 7 notes before notes start repeating, we only use 7 letters to label them:

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - A

Notice that when we run out of the 7 letters, we repeat the first letter. The first letter and the 8th letter are the same because they are the same pitch in octaves. An OCTAVE is the relationship between a note and its same pitch one placement higher or lower on an instrument. These notes are related because an octave above a note is double the Hertz frequency.

On your keyboard, you might notice that there are white and black keys - 12 distinct positions before the pattern repeats - and 12 is more than 7! The 7 white keys use the letter names A, B, C, D, E, F & G while the black keys use different names. We will learn how to label those a bit later …

To be able to read music in Western Music Theory, musicians use a MUSICAL STAFF - a graphical device of 5 horizontal lines with 4 horizontal spaces between. By placing a circle (called a NOTE HEAD) on each line or space, musicians can then tell what note is meant to be played in a given moment. 5 lines and 4 spaces allow us to read 9 notes. Since there are many more than 9 audible notes in music, musicians use different CLEFS - symbols at the beginning of the staff to place the staff in a specific range of notes like high notes, middle notes, and low notes. The “default” staff for Western Music Theory and many instruments (including piano right-hand) is the TREBLE CLEF.

CLEFS

TREBLE CLEF

The TREBLE CLEF is the musical clef used for the highest notes in music. It is used by high-pitched instruments like the clarinet, guitar, trumpet, and oboe. It is also called the “G CLEF” because the spiral in the treble shape curls around the second line from the bottom which holds the note “G”. When learning the treble clef, memorize the curl around the G line and use it as an anchor to find your other notes. Musicians read notes from the bottom of a clef up, so the alphabet rises through the clef. Another way to learn the clefs are mnemonic devices that represent the lines and spaces. For the treble clef, the lines (from bottom to top) are represented by the sentence: Every Good Band Deserves Fame. The spaces (from bottom to top) spell the word FACE.

BASS CLEF

The BASS CLEF is the musical clef used for the lowest notes in music. It is used by low-pitched instruments like the cello, tuba, bassoon, and bass. It is also called the “F CLEF” because the two dots in the bass shape center around the fourth line from the bottom which holds the note “F”. When learning the bass clef, memorize the dots around the F line and use it as an anchor to find your other notes. When reading the notes from the bottom up, the mnemonic device that represent the lines is the sentence: Good Burritos Don’t Fall Apart. The spaces (from bottom to top) use the sentence: All Cows Eat Grass.

ALTO CLEF

There is one more clef that you should keep on your radar, although you won’t be expected to work with it during Music Theory I. The ALTO CLEF is the middle clef that exists in the upper part of the bass clef and lower part of the treble clef. It is almost exclusively used by the viola (so it’s important to be able to read when looking at orchestra music or string quartets). The alto symbol centers on the note C, so it is also referred to as the “C CLEF”. This particular C is called “Middle C” because it is the center C on the 88-key piano.

LEDGER LINES

Treble, Bass, and Alto clef are a great way to center yourself in a particular range of pitch based on your instrument, but what happens if you need more notes outside of the 9 using the lines and spaces of the staff? This is when ledger lines come into play. LEDGER LINES are extensions of the musical staff: small, individual, horizontal lines that allow musicians to read and play notes higher or lower than the five lines of the staff allow. To read ledger lines, you memorize the top and bottom lines of the clef they are reading. When reading above the staff, you simply continue to move through the alphabet, adding the next letter for every line and space you pass. When reading above the staff, you do the same thing, but count backwards through the alphabet since the notes are descending.
*IMPORTANT NOTE: most beginning musicians will forget to count lines AND spaces for ledger lines and only count lines. This will lead you to think a ledger line note is much closer to the staff than it actually is. Don’t forget to count spaces!

GRAND STAFF

Most instruments have a limited number of notes they can play so they stick to the range of one clef and its ledger lines. The violin uses the treble clef while the trombone uses the bass clef. However, some instruments (like the piano) have a very wide range of notes and need to anchor their ranges by using both the treble and bass clef rather than using a million ledger lines. When composing or reading music with in these wide ranges, musicians use the GRAND STAFF, a combination of both the treble and bass clef with “Middle C” as the link ledger line at the halfway point between them. The Grand Staff makes it much easier to read a wide range of notes with minimal ledger lines.

A NOTE ON STEMS …

Recall from our unit on rhythm that the line coming out of a note head (which establishes its rhythmic value) is called a STEM. Once we place a note vertically on a staff to represent a pitch, the stem also takes on a strict placement based on where the pitch is on the staff. Moving forward, please have this rule memorized:

For notes below the middle line of the staff, stems go up-on-the-right, for notes above the middle, stems go down-to-the-left. The middle line can have stems down or up. A note with TWO stems coming out of it (like the Middle C above) represents two voices sounding on the same note at once.

ACCIDENTALS

We now know how to label the 7 white keys on the piano and how to place them in the treble and bass (and even alto!) clefs - but what about the black keys on the piano? There is no letter between “C” and “D” so we can’t use a distinct label for the black key between these two white keys. Instead, we label these notes using accidentals. ACCIDENTALS are symbols you can add to a note head to move it one key to the left or right on the piano (and one pitch up or down on any instrument).

SHARP

To move a note one pitch higher (to the right on the piano), you add a SHARP sign next to the note head. A sharp sign looks like a tic-tac-toe board, a pound key, or hashtag: ♯. Notice that this symbol slants up to the right, slightly different than the key on your keyboard which does this: #. For simplicity’s sake, the keyboard symbol “#” will be used throughout this website’s text when referring to sharps.

FLAT

To move a note one pitch lower (to the left on the piano), you add a FLAT sign next to the note head. A flat sign looks like a lower-case “B”, or the right half of a heart with a line dissecting it: ♭. For the sake of this course, the lower-case “b” will be used in text when referring to flats.

NATURAL

A NATURAL sign is used to cancel out a sharp or flat. Technically, when you refer to any white key on the piano, like the note A, you really mean the note “A Natural”. You don’t need to say “Natural” or use its symbol because it is default/assumed. The only time you need to use naturals is when a sharp or flat is being used on that note and you want to revert it to its natural state. The natural sign looks like an “L” and a “7” meeting in the middle: ♮. In this course, I will write out A-natural if I need to specifically draw attention to the natural sign; otherwise, I will just use the note names with no accidental to mean the natural version of the note.

Always place accidentals to the LEFT of the written note head on the staff. This helps musicians to read the accidental before the note so they can play the correct one.

Think about the note G. If you had G-natural and the other accidental versions of that same note, how would you put the pitches in order from lowest to highest?

G ♭- G♮ - G♯

G-flat, G-natural, G-sharp is the correct order because Gb is the lowest of the three, G-natural is the default, and G# raises the G up one pitch. See other examples below on the piano keyboard with note names:

There are such things as double flats and double sharps which we won’t cover in this unit - but these are used in very special situations to raise or lower a note by two pitches.

ENHARMONIC EQUIVALENTS

Notice that the black keys on the piano above and many of the white keys have two identifying note names. Two (or more) note names for the same exact pitch are called ENHARMONICS. The word enharmonics implies that you are hearing the same pitch but could label that pitch by two different note names that are enharmonically related. The reason this happens is because you can label any of these notes in terms of the note above or below it.

Take the black key between G and A, for example. If we label it in terms of G, it is a G#. If we label it in terms of A, it is an Ab - either way, you hear the same pitch. The reason it’s important to be able to label it in these two ways has to do with scales and chords (which we’ll cover in later units). If we already have the note A in a scale and want the pitch a half step below it, we must call that pitch G#. Conversely, if we already have the note G in a scale and want the pitch a half step above it, we must call that pitch Ab. It may seem arbitrary right now, but it will make more sense as we start using them.

The note C can be called B# and the note B can be called Cb because of this enharmonic rule. When we refer to the note B (which is one pitch lower than C) in terms of C, we have the option of labeling it Cb if needed.

WHOLE STEPS vs. HALF STEPS

Since there is a black key between most white keys on the piano, the distance between most white keys is called a WHOLE STEP. C-D, F-G, G-A, and A-B are all whole steps. This is the distance between a note and two keys on the piano away. Ab-Bb is also a whole step; as is C#-D#, F#-G#, and even Eb-F.
The distance between any of these notes and a note directly touching it is called a HALF STEP. A half step is the shortest distance between any two notes. C-C# is a half step as is C-B. G-G# is a half step as is G-Gb, just a half step in the other direction. G-Ab and G-F# would yield the same pitched half steps, they are just labeled now as different enharmonics.

Half steps and whole steps are very important in music and make up the foundation of all scales (that we will learn about next week) and most simple melodies found in folk and pop music. Half steps are extremely DISSONANT, meaning that the sound of a half step is very unpleasant because the pitches are so close together and their frequencies “rub” against one another aurally. The whole step is slightly less dissonant and more CONSONANT (pleasant-sounding) because there is a little more distance between the two pitches and they don’t clash as dramatically.

The musical half step is represented by the letter H (which is perfect, since we don’t need H in the pitch alphabet) and the whole step is represented by the letter W.

Half steps and whole steps are both considered STEPS in music because the letter names are almost always adjacent. Moving from one note to a whole or half step up or down is considered CONJUNCT, STEPWISE MOTION. Any movement larger than this (where the note leaps to another note name that is not adjacent) is called a SKIP or LEAP and could be called DISJUNCT, SKIPWISE MOTION although the term “skipwise” is kind of weird and you could just say “the melody leaps”.

INTERVALS

Reading and identifying notes in clefs is a very important rudimental skill in music. Once you can do this with ease, the next step is to identify the relationships between two notes. An INTERVAL is the distance between notes measured by how many notes are between the bottom and top note. Intervals can be HARMONIC (sounding at the same time) or MELODIC (sounding sequentially). Melodic intervals can be ASCENDING (where the second note sounds higher than the first) or DESCENDING (where the second note sounds lower than the first). Interval categories can further be divided by GENERIC or SPECIFIC. We will begin this week by identifying generic intervals and follow up next week with specific intervals …

GENERIC INTERVALS

To determine the generic interval between any two notes, simply count the number of lines and spaces within the range of the two notes, including the position of both notes. To do this, you don’t even need to know what clef you are in or what the notes are. You simply determine the number and call the interval by that number.

In this generic harmonic interval example, the bottom note is on the second line up and the top note is on the fourth line up. When you count each line and space (including the position of the two notes of the interval), you get: “line-space-line-space-line” which is five positions. Since there are five positions, this interval is called a “fifth”. All generic intervals will follow this labeling pattern: second, third, fourth, fifth … except when the note is the same note. If it is the exact same note, it is called a UNISON (not a “first”), if it is a note and the same note exactly one higher or lower, it is called an OCTAVE (not an “eighth”). After octaves, you have ninths, tenths, elevenths and so on, but you will not encounter these in Music Theory I.

Here are a few constants to help memorization of generic intervals:

Unison - always the same note

Second - note and the closest note to it

Third - space to next space -or- line to next line

Fourth - space/skip/line -or- line/skip/space

Fifth - line/skip/line -or- space/skip/space

Sixth - line/skip/skip/space -or- space/skip/skip/line

Seventh - line/skip/skip/line -or- space/skip/skip/space

Octave - note and same letter name up or down.

MEMORIZE FOR THIS WEEK …

• Notes in the treble and bass clef

• How to identify notes in the treble clef

• Sharp, flat, and natural signs

• Enharmonic equivalents

• How to identify half steps versus whole steps

• How to determine generic intervals by counting between notes