Theory:lesson 2,Reading From Staff pt.2

Learning the notes:

So now let's become more practical with the musical staff and learn to read notes. If you haven't yet,you should read through the first part of this lesson.

First,let's look at the notes of the G-clef.I will use a learning method that my theory teacher showed me some years ago. You can find your own way to learn them but it really helped me to learn the notes on each line and on each space separately.






So,in the G-Clef the notes on the lines ,from bottom to top, are E-G-B-D-F. You should really give enough time to have an optical connection to the notes on the staff. It will REALLY help you in your music path to easily recognize each note.

Now on spaces:






Pretty easy huh? From Bottom to top again the notes are F-A-C-E.

The range of each clef though can be extended by using additional lines for notes above and below the 5 base lines of the staff.







You can use as many extension lines as you need.However using lots of them can really make the notes unreadable. So always use the appropriate Clef to avoid too much lines.
You can always calculate all the notes by using the clef as a guide to find the G note or the F-note on the F-clef. As you know they are ascending from bottom to top.However knowing the notes optically is crucial for every musician even if he won't do any sight-reading.

Let's take a look at the F-Clef's notes now. I won't show the notes on the extension lines ,you can calculate them yourself using the next notes as guides:





So on the lines the notes are G-B-D-F-A from bottom to top.

As for the spaces:







It's A-C-E-G.


Accidentals:

Ok,so now you know where is each note on the staff. But what about those black notes on the piano ?
I talked about them in the previous part of this lesson. As i mentioned they are the alternations of the natural notes. So the accidental symbols are 5 basically:










So, what do they do?

The Sharp symbol before a note raises it's pitch by a half-step.If you don't know what a half-step is, don't worry i will talk about it in my next lesson on the intervals. For now just think about it as the smallest step that you can make on the piano from one note to another. So if you see a Sharp sign before a D note then this note is called D-sharp (D#) and it's the black note on the piano at the right side of the D note:














I talked about accidentals on piano in Lesson 1 of Theory basics.

Note that the E# is actually the F note because there is no black note between them. The same applies to the B# note.You may ask then "whay do we need to call the F note E# sometimes,if it's the same note?". That's a pretty frequently asked question ,but you will understand the reason when you'll get a bit deeper to theory.So , for now just keep all that in mind.

The Flat symbol before a note will lower it's pitch by a half-step:
















Again, the Cb is the B note and the Fb is the E note.

We haven't actually talked about the measures and the rhythms but i will just tell you that every piece written on the staff is divided to measures. You can see that in the next example. Do you see the vertical lines? These are the bars that are dividing the measures. So from one bar or the beginning of the staff to the next bar is one measure:










I'm talking about that because the accidental ,if it exist before a note ,applies to the same note for the whole measure. So if there is and F# in the measure and after it there is another F without a # sign before it ,the note still will be sharped (sometimes the # inside a parenthesis is used as a reminder of the existing sharp) .






Also the accidentals symbols are often written right after the clef or at the start of the staff line.If that happens then that accidental applies to the whole composition (Global accidentals) or after a change of the global accidentals.(if there is a double vertical bar and there are other accidentals after it it's a change of the global accidentals). You will understand why that's important when i'll discuss the scales and the modes.

When you want to cancel the accidental symbol in a note to make it natural note you must use the Natural symbol before it. This will cancel both the global accidentals and the local (inside the measure) accidentals on a note.The natural sign also applies only for one measure.

1st Example:








2nd Example:








Here you can see how the C note is changed due to the accidental symbols and after the 5th measure notice the global accidentals change (the double bar and the new symbols).

The global accidentals are used to show the Key of the song. I will talk about keys in another lesson.

And before i end this lesson, you may noticed that in the accidentals image that i posted above there are two more symbols.These are the double flat and the double sharp symbols. I believe that this is self-explaining. The double flat symbol lowers the pitch two half-steps (that makes a whole-step) and the double sharp raises the note for a whole-tone.






Here you can see the double-sharp first (the X symbol) and the double-flat symbol (bb).

There is much more to learn about the theory basics ,but i hope that i made this aspect of theory as easy as i could to understand,and didn't forget anything important. So in the next lesson i will discuss the rhythm,the rests, the note durations and some more. Happy studying...