don't knock the notation

Where did I leave off? I think it was accidentals, intervals, enharmonics, and duration.

Accidentals:
Accidentals are symbols used to indicate the raising or lowering of a pitch, they are placed to the left of a notehead.

Sharp ( ♯ ) raise the pitch a halp step
Flat ( ♭ ) lowers the pitch a half step
Natural (♮) cancels any previous sharp or flat and returns to the natural, or unaltered, pitch
Double Sharp ( * ) raise the pitch two half steps (or whole step)
Double Flat ( ♭♭ ) lowers the pitch two half steps

Intervals:
Although the movement of half steps and whole steps would make a lot more sense if I explained intervals.
An Interval is the relationship between two tones. If you think of a piano keyboard, a half step is the interval between any two adjacent keys (black or white). This is the smallest interval used in Western music.

the interval between every note is a half step

Enharmonic Equivalents:

Remember the scene in The Goonies, when Andy has to play the organ made of bones and she gets stuck and says "I can't tell if the next note is an A#(sharp) or a Bb(flat)!"   Well really it doesn't matter, since they are actually the same note, they are enharmonics. (these 2 notes are shown in the 3rd pair shown below)
Enharmonic equivalents are tones that have the same pitch but different letter names.

To see and hear enharmonics, click the play arrow in the upper left corner of the window below:



Half Step Motion:
In passages of music involving half-step motion, a flatted note is followed most often by a note with a different letter name a half step lower.
A sharped note is followed most by a note with a different letter name a half step higher in passages involving half-step motion.



I think I'll leave duration out for now. It is very detailed and requires special attention. I should probably spend a whole entry discussing just notation of duration so until next time...


Read this and other entries on my blog: http://watercolorhalfnotes.blogspot.com