Theory Basics

The World According to the Piano

Music theory is based upon the measured pitches and keys found on the piano. The violin family of instruments, without frets or keys, is unlimited in the ability to create various tones. Yet all of our western written music is based upon the ebony & ivory of the piano, organ and harpsichord. To the left you'll see the names of the natural notes on the white keys. Note that the music alphabet begins with "A", goes to "G" and then starts over again with "A".

The Grand Staff and Pitch

The Grand Staff is comprised of two staves of five lines each. It uses both the treble clef and bass clef, as well as ledger lines (see middle C left).

The higher a note is placed upon the staff, the higher the pitch will sound. High notes can be found in nature in the voices of song birds. Low notes are found in the deep songs of the humpbacks. "Pitch" is the word we use to describe this quality of sound. The placement of the circular portion of a note tells us what pitch is to be played. Notes are either placed on lines (with a line running through their middle), or on spaces (flanked by lines). From "F" to "F" in the music above is one octave. The order by which music came to be organized is a reflection of our western culture during the Age of Absolutism or Baroque era from 1600 to 1750. The staff is patterned after the five fingers of our own hand, and the seven notes (A-G) like the biblical seven days of creation.

Treble, Alto, and Bass Clefs

The Clef sits to the left of each line of music and converts a five line staff into a range of notes. For example, the note sitting on the top line of the treble clef is "F", whereas the top line of the bass clef is a note "A" played 12 pitches lower.

The violinist only uses the treble clef and many ledger lines for higher notes. Cellists & bass players play in the bass clef range, but may also need to use the higher clefs for certain music.

The violist primarily uses alto clef, which lies in between treble and bass clef, and then they must also learn treble clef. The small staff below shows middle C on the alto clef. The brave violist lives in a world of their own!

Other Symbols

To the right of the clef is the meter, which has to do with the math and rhythm portion of notation. The top number of the meter tells us how many beats are in each measure. The diagram above shows bar lines which divide off the measures within the music. The bottom number tells us which note gets each beat. A meter of 4/4 would be four beats of quarter notes. A meter of 4/2 would be four beats of half notes. To understand this better it helps to know the rhythmic value names of various notes commonly used by beginning musicians.

Pizza and Note Values

The easiest way to begin an explanation of fractions to a young person is to talk in terms of pizza. If you're really hungry, do you want a whole, half, or quarter of a pizza?

Music notes work in the same fashion, beginning with the round pizza-shaped whole note. Then as this largest note with the longest value becomes split into smaller parts, the symbols change. Below we see a whole note, then two half notes, then four quarter notes, then eight eighth notes.

Note cards (3 X 5) are a great tool for showing the size relationship of one note to another:
Starting with a whole note on one whole card, take cards and split them into smaller fractional parts then write the corresponding note on each part. We can then lay the smaller notes on the larger ones to find out how many eighths in a half note, for instance. Since tempo (speed) and meter (beats) can change the length of any single note, a note's value is only determined by it's relationship to the notes around it.

Now, let's see how those half and quarter notes look with our 4/4 meter:

(Each of these notes is an E, one octave apart.)

For this we'll need to refer back to the piano. The "natural" notes are named on the keyboard above. The notes to the right go up in pitch, the notes to the left move down in pitch. Moving to the next black or white key is moving one half step, and skipping a key to play the next would be a whole step. On a fingerboard these half steps are achieved by fingers being placed close together.

A "sharp" looks like a number or tic-tac-toe sign: #
and means to go one half step higher in pitch. On the fingerboard "higher" means moving toward the musician and away from the scroll.

A "flat" looks like a squished letter b
and means to go one half step lower in pitch. (Toward the scroll aprox. one finger's width.)

The "key signature" is written in between the clef and the meter,

but can also be found in any place that the key changes. The key signature shows how many sharps and flats will be used in any given piece of music. Often one can count on the ebony keys to represent these notes, but as there become more sharps or flats in the key signature we can find notes like "B #", which on the piano would be played on the white key normally referred to as "C". (Two notes that sound the same but are named differently are referred to as " enharmonic" notes.) These notes make even the best string musician stop and consider their intonation carefully.

Musicians and theorists organize the key

signatures around a circle that looks much like a clock.
Beginning with the key of C Major and no sharps or flats, the key signatures using sharps move clockwise around the circle as each sharp is added. The flat key signatures move counter-clockwise around the same circle. At the bottom, where there are 5, 6, and 7 sharps or flats, there are two key signatures written. Those key signatures occupying the same space on the circle would use the exact same notes and sound the same on the piano. Only the name and style of writing the key changes; is it 7 sharps or 5 flats? These key signatures have notes that are enharmonically the same, but are named different.

This circle is referred to as The Circle of Fifths. A fifth is an interval, or distance between two notes within the music alphabet. Violin, viola, cello, are all tuned in fifths. One can find a fifth by starting with "A",
for example, and then counting A, B, C, D, E;
the "E" is one "Fifth" away from the note "A".

Now, about those minor key signatures. Let's say that I played a one octave C Major scale starting on the note C. If I used that same key signature, all the same notes, but began and ended my scale three notes lower using A as the starting and ending point... it would change the way the scale sounded and it would be "a minor". This happens because we are changing where the "home note" or "tonic" note (beginning and ending note) is placed and because the half steps and whole steps end up in different spots along the scale. In the Major scale, the first half step comes between the 3rd note (Mi) and 4th note (Fa) and the second half step falls between the 7th note (Ti) and last 8 note (Do). On the keyboard you can see the half steps for the key of C Major occur when we go from E to F, then B to C. In the minor scale, the half steps are between the 2nd (Re) and 3rd (Me) note and the 5th (Sol) and 6th (Le) notes. The half steps in "a minor" are still from B to C, then E to F, but they land in a different place on the scale and with their corresponding chords will sound entirely different. (The 8 notes of any Major scale can be sung with a movable "Do" solfege: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do.)
Try it: Use any keyboard and play the white keys going from C to C for Major, then going from A to A for minor. Play, see, and hear this to better understand how changing the home note changes how a key signature feels.

Note Reading & Music Theory Basics