On a page of printed music, most of the symbols, and the way they are positioned, concern two things:

• Pitch
• High or low notes; whether a note is C, D, E or whatever
• Duration
• Whether notes are long or short; how they relate to each other in time

We’ll start in this chapter with pitch.

WHAT IS PITCH?

In music we talk of sounds being ‘high’ or ‘low’ – meaning high-pitched or low-pitched. You probably know this instinctively, but high–pitched sounds are those made at the right-hand end of a piano keyboard, or by high-pitched instruments such as piccolo or descant recorder. Low-pitched sounds come from the left-hand end of the piano, or from instruments such as double-bass or tuba.

THE STAVE

When music is written down, the stave (or staff) – a set of five horizontal lines – is a way of indicating high or low:

Notes can be positioned on the lines:

or in the spaces:

Ledger lines

The five-line stave can be extended upwards or downwards by using ledger lines:

Notes can be put on or between the ledger lines:

Higher and lower notes

These two notes are very close together – but the black note is a litde higher than the white note:

These two are further apart:

and these two are still further apart:

but in each case the black note is the higher one.

CLEFS

But what notes are they, those notes? What are they called? We don’t know. We only know how far apart they are, relative to each other.

In order to give the notes a more fixed identity, we must attach a clef to the stave.

This is a treble clef:

And this is a bass clef:

There are other clefs, but those two are by far the most commonly used.

USING A CLEF FIXES THE PITCH

When we put a clef on a stave, it has the effect of fixing or identifying the pitch of the lines and spaces. For instance, if we put a treble clef on a stave, like this:

we can then put a name to each note – each line and each space. The bottom line, for instance, is E:

And these are F and G:

More precisely still, we can call the bottom line ‘the E above middle C, to distinguish it from other Es. Middle C itself is written on the first ledger line below the stave:

Putting a bass clef on the stave also fixes the pitches of the lines and spaces, but at a different, lower pitch range. The top line, for instance, is A – ‘A below middle C:

And this is middle C, using the bass clef:

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘MIDDLE C’?

Finding C on a piano

Look at this diagram of a piano keyboard:

Keyboard players orientate themselves by looking at the pattern of black notes – alternate twos and threes. They need to do this even if they are only playing white notes.

C is always just to the left of the two black notes. Every white note to the left of a pair of black notes is a C:

Middle C

The C nearest the middle of any piano is called ‘middle C

There’s nothing special about middle C. It’s just one note, a particular pitch.

But by giving that note a special name – a name that distinguishes it from other notes, even other Cs – we gain a point of reference. And that point of reference applies to all music, not just piano music.

Incidentally, middle C is always near the middle of a true piano keyboard, but electronic keyboards are sometimes laid out differently. Middle C may be quite far over to the left – or its position may be electronically switchable.

‘Higher’ or ‘lower’ – on a piano

When you sit facing a piano keyboard, the higher notes are on your right, the lower ones on your left. This may seem obvious to you, but it’s worth being clear about. When we play ‘upwards’ on the piano we play notes from left to right. ‘Downwards’ is from right to left.

Going up from middle C

If we play five white notes on a piano, starting on middle C and going ‘up’ (rightwards), this is what we play:

If we write five notes on a stave with a treble clef, also starting on middle C and going up, we write the same five notes:

NOTE-NAMES

To identify the notes, to give them ‘names’, we use the first seven letters of the alphabet, A to G. As we’ve seen, if we start at middle C and go up, step by step, we get D, E, F and G. But the next note up is A, and the cycle of seven letters starts again:

In notation, the same notes look like this:

Look again at the pattern of black and white notes on the keyboard. The five black notes mesh with seven white notes, corresponding to the seven letter names A to G. This is why C, or any other note, always recurs in the same position relative to the black notes.

Going down from middle C

Similarly, if we go down from middle C, this is what we get:

We could start writing this with the treble clef:

but we’d need more and more ledger lines. The bass clef is a lot more suitable, because of the pitch range:

We read music just like we read words: from left to right. When you look at the stave above, you are reading a descending series of notes, starting with middle C. Of course, when you look at the same notes on the keyboard diagram, further above, they appear from right to left, because the lowest notes are at the left end of a keyboard.

WHY THE SEVEN-NOTE PATTERN RECURS

When you play the notes on a piano (or any instrument) from A up to G, why is the next note A again and not H? Why does that sequence of seven notes keep repeating as one goes up or down in pitch?

It’s an important thing to understand, and if possible you should hear the reason. So even if you don’t play or own an instrument, please try to borrow or gain access to one for this particular exercise.

Listening to notes with the same name

Once you have access to an instrument, play several different Cs. For instance, if you have a piano, play middle C, then the C above, then the C below. (Use the keyboard diagrams to help you find C. Look at the pattern of the black notes. C is always just left of the two black notes.) Listen closely.

In one sense the Cs are different from each other, because one is clearly higher or lower than another. But in a different sense they are specially similar, and that’s why they share the same note-name. Can you hear that similarity? Play other notes for comparison.

Then repeat the exercise using As instead of Cs.

Again, you should find that although two different As differ in pitch – one is higher or lower than the other – they are in another sense similar, almost the same. It’s one of the things about music that’s difficult to describe in words.

OCTAVES

The distance from one C to the next C, up or down, is called one octave.

You will appreciate the meaning of two octaves:

Octaves don’t just go from C to C, they exist from any note to another note with the same letter-name:

TEST YOURSELF

Look at all these notes. Try to remember all of them – which lines or spaces they use.

Now look at the octave examples at the top of the page. Are all the notes correctly labelled? (Yes, they are – but please check for yourself, especially those awkward notes with lots of ledger lines.)

It’s time to test yourself. Cover up the opposite page; then look at the notes below and on the next page, and say what they are. You should become gradually quicker at identifying them as you work your way through this exercise. Remember: always look to see which clef you’re in. (Even the best musicians sometimes play the wrong notes because they have forgotten which clef they’re in.) Answers on page 126.

How did you do with the note-naming exercise? Always remember the importance of the clef: the lines and spaces have no intrinsic pitch until there’s a clef there to fix the pitches.

One more test: look back through the note-naming exercise and pick out all the times that middle C is printed. Again, you can check your answer on page 126.