officially official

Well, now I am officially linked to the Bulletin's site so my posts will reach more than 3 people.

Also! That book I ordered has finally arrived! Who ever had this book before must not have been a music major, because there is a LOT of highlighting in it hah.

So to recap, I have talked about the materials of music being sound and time; the elements that make up sound: pitch, intensity, duration, and timbre (tone color), and a few basic fundamentals of notation.

I left off on The Clefs, and have so far explained the treble clef, the bass clef, and the grand staff. But, I bet you didn't know that it doesn't stop there. Oh no! There is another clef. The C clef, and it the most versatile of them all. It is the only clef than can move up and down the staff, where it gains a new name so as to identify each of the possible positions. It is called the C clef, because where the 2 backwards c's (or sideways mustache :-P  ) meets is designated as middle C.

The alto clef is a C clef that designates the 3rd line of the staff as middle C. It is the standard clef used in music for viola (so yes, I am quite familiar with this clef haha).

The tenor clef is a C clef that designates the 4th line of the staff as middle C. This clef is occasionally found in music written for cello, bassoon, or trombone (all of which generally read in bass clef).

The soprano, mezzo soprano, and baritone clefs are used less often than the alto and tenor clefs.

Octave Identification
Since the pitch spectrum is so wide, it is often necessary to identify a specific note by the octave in which it appears. But realistically, it's not something that I find used very much in my music so I'll just give you the jist of it and move on.

Think of a piano keyboard, repeating the pattern of CDEFGABC throughout the whole length. Each pattern set makes up an octave, and each octave gets a number in order to identify how high or low it is.

the exclamation point shape was not intentional.

Side Note: Although it may look written differently, middle C will always sound the same. Here is Middle C in all clefs, looks different but if you closed your eyes and listened, they would all be the same pitch.

Middle C is identified as C4.

The octave above an indicated note is sometimes abbreviated 8va, and the octave below 8vb. This is used when a large number of ledger lines make note reading difficult.

Ledger Lines
Pitches that go beyond the limits of the staff are written by adding ledger lines above or below the staff. Ledger lines, which parallel the staff, accommodate only one note.

We'll stop here for today and pick up with more notation next time. ie: accidentals, intervals, enharmonics, and notation of duration.