This week learn how to read music by learning about different clefs.
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Let’s start at the very beginning, with the staff. The staff acts as an environment for the music, and it encodes a lot of information about the pitch and timing of the notes. Most staves have 5 lines with 4 spaces in between, each representing a different pitch. The exception to this rule is music written for unpitched percussion instruments, like the bass drum or cymbals. Then a staff with a single line is sometimes used, since the instrument can only play one sound anyway. In English speaking countries, notes are labelled with the letters A through G, in order of increasing pitch. When you reach G, you repeat the pattern, with this A being an octave above the other A, but essentially the same note.
On the staff you’ll find a clef, which tells you which pitches the lines and spaces on the staff will represent. The most common clef is the treble clef. It’s not just a random squiggle, the hook must wrap around the second line of the staff to denote that this line will represent a G. This is why the treble clef is sometimes called a G-clef. If the second line is a G, then the space below that line is an F, and the space above that line is an A. A helpful mnemonic for remembering what pitches go where is “Every good boy does fine” for the lines, and “FACE” for the spaces. The next most common clef is the bass clef, often used for instruments like the tuba or string bass. Here the dots surround the fourth line of the staff to denote that this line represents an F, albeit an F a few octaves lower than the F on the treble clef staff. A helpful mnemonic in this case is “Good boys do fine always” for the lines and “All cars eat gas” for the spaces. There are other less common clefs, such as the alto clef for instruments between the bass and treble registers, like the viola, and the neutral clef for unpitched percussion instruments. Notes that are slightly lower or higher than the staff allows must be written using ledger lines below or above the staff.
Music isn’t composed of only these 7 notes; western music actually contains 12 distinct notes. The pitches that fall between the initial 7 are denoted by sharps and flats. For example, the note that falls between a D and an E is called a D sharp or an E flat. The key signature, located right after the clef, lets you know which notes should be played as sharp or flat throughout the piece of music. The sharp or flat symbols rest on the line or space of the staff representing the appropriate note, so this key signature tells the musician to play all Bs and Es as B flat and E flat instead. If the composer wants one of the Es to be a regular E and not an E flat, he simply adds a natural sign just before the E. Likewise, if he wants only one of the Cs to be a C sharp, he adds a sharp sign just before that C. The sharps, flats, and naturals that are added before notes instead of in the key signature are called accidentals.
Pitch is only half the story a note has to tell. Next time we’ll look at how rhythm is written in music.