82 Part II: Getting Sound Down on Paper

Hanging from a clefInstead of adding more lines and spaces to accommodate all the occurrences of each of the seven notes, you get a symbol to help out with the job. Think of it as your secret decoder ring, Captain Music Maker. Notice the little squiggly thing at the far left of the staff in Figure 6-3. This ornamental creature is called a clef (this one is the treble clef, to be exact).

Figure 6-3: The treble

clef. G line

A clefs sole purpose in life is to tell you the names of the lines and spaces on the staff. If the clef could talk, it would say something like, For this set of notes, the lines and spaces represent these keys.

Music uses several different clefs, but as a keyboard player youre in luck you only need to know two of em. Think of it as having a clef for each hand.

Treble clefGenerally, the treble clef (shown in Figure 6-3) signals notes to be played by the right hand. This clef is also called the G clef because it

Looks like a (very) stylized G.

Circles around the second staff line which (not coincidentally) represents the note G.

The G line encircled by the treble clef isnt for just any old G key. Its the G thats closest to the middle of your keyboard (see Figure 6-4 for a guide). After youve found this G, reading the other lines and spaces on the staff is as easy as reciting the alphabet.

If youre close to a keyboard, put a right-hand finger on this G key. (If youre not close to a keyboard, refer to the keys you see in Figure 6-4.) The next white key up (to the right) of the G is represented by the next space up on the staff. According to my E-Z Key Finder in Chapter 5, G stands for Go back to the beginning of the alphabet, so the next white key on the keyboard and the next space up on the staff correspond to the note A.

83 Chapter 6: Reading Lines and Spaces

Figure 6-4: Finding tre-ble clef G is no trouble.

GC

Middle C Treble clef G

Continue up and down the staff and you get the musical notes you see in Figure 6-5.

Figure 6-5: Names for

notes on the treble clef lines and

spaces.

& w w w w wE G B D F

& w w w wF A C E

Bass clefYour left hand typically plays the lower notes on the keyboard, which are also called bass notes. (For the record, thats pronounced like base, not like the fish you caught last weekend.)

The rules of equality demand that the left hand get its own clef, too. Meet the bass clef (shown in Figure 6-6). Like the treble clef, the bass clef surrounds a particular line that represents a particular note: F. You can remember the special relationship between the bass clef and the note F by thinking about the following two things:

The bass clefs two dots surround the staff line that represents the note F.

The bass clef looks like a stylized F (use your imagination).

You can call the bass clef the F clef or just think of it as a stylized B (the dots are the humps) for bass.

84 Part II: Getting Sound Down on Paper

Figure 6-6:The bass

clef.

F line

The bass clef doesnt surround the F just below the treble clef G. Instead, this F is one octave grouping below (or to the left), as shown in Figure 6-7. (See Chapter 5 for more on octave groupings.)

Figure 6-7: Finding bass clef F on the

keyboard.

GF C

Middle C Treble clef GBass clef F

To read the notes on the bass clef, simply start with the F line and travel down (backward) and up (forward) through the alphabet. Figure 6-8 shows you the notes on the bass clef staff.

Figure 6-8: Names for

notes on the bass clef lines and

spaces.

? w w w w wG B D F A

? w w w wA C E G

85 Chapter 6: Reading Lines and Spaces On both the treble and bass staff, notice that the bottom line and top space

have the same letter name theyre an octave apart. Same goes for the bottom space and top line on each staff. An octave above a note on a space is written on a line, and an octave above a note on a line is written on a space. Figure 6-9 illustrates my point beautifully.

Figure 6-9: Clues for

reading octaves.

& w w w wF F E E

? w w w wA A G G

AccidentalsYou may be wondering how black keys are represented by these lines and spaces. Chapter 5 explains that the black keys are sharps and flats; for exam-ple, a B-flat is the black key to the left of (or lower than) a B, and an F-sharp is the black key to the right of (or higher than) an F. Instead of adding more lines and spaces to show the sharps and flats, a much simpler approach places these sharps and flats, or accidentals, on the same lines or spaces as their natural notes but with little symbols to the left of the notes. So B-flat sits on the B line with a little flat symbol next to it, and F-sharp is written on the F line with a sharp sign next to it. The natural sign cancels the flat or sharp, returning the note to its natural state, as you can see in Figure 6-10.

Figure 6-10: Notating

accidentals. B B-flat B-natural F F-sharp F-natural

92 Part II: Getting Sound Down on Paper Reading music is similar. You play the notes on the staff from left to right.

When you get to the end of the staff or the edge of the page, you drop down to the beginning of the next staff, or set of staves, and keep playing until you get to the final bar line. (This process is the same whether youre reading from a single staff or a grand staff.) The arrows along the dotted line in Figure 6-19 show you what I mean. Notice that the appropriate clefs appear on every new line of music.

Figure 6-19: Keep on reading, keep on playing.

5

96 Part II: Getting Sound Down on Paper

Figure 7-1: Bar lines

help group the beats.

Clap to the rhythm

slashes.

1,Clap: 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4

Bar lines

1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4

Basic Note Values: Serving Some Musical Pie

When you listen to music played on the keyboard, or any other instrument for that matter, you hear notes of different lengths. Some notes sound as long as a fog horn; other notes are quite short, like a bird chirping; and others are of a medium length, like the moo of a cow. The melody of a song is defined as much by its rhythm its combination of long-, short-, and medium-length notes as by the actual pitches. Melody without rhythm is just a non-descript series of musical tones. Rhythm without melody is, well, a drum solo.

Some songs are so well-known that you can recognize them by their rhythm alone. For example, the holiday favorite Jingle Bells has a unique rhyth-mic pattern. After hearing it in every shopping mall and grocery store from November to January each year, youd probably recognize the song if some-one simply clapped the rhythm of the melody.

Piano music uses lots of different symbols and characters. Perhaps the most important symbols to know are those that tell you the length of each note. The unique order and pattern of note lengths make up a songs melodic rhythm.

Each note you play lasts for a certain number of beats or a certain fraction of a beat. Dont worry math doesnt exactly thrill me either. So, Im pleased to tell you that the fractions you use in music are no more complex than the fractions you use when you carve up a fresh pie.

Picture yourself at the ultimate dessert table, staring at hundreds of freshly-baked, meringue-topped pies. (Ill take the coconut cream one, thank you.) Now, pretend that each pie represents one measure of music.

Your master chef (the composer) tells you at the beginning of the dessert (music) how many equal pieces to cut each pie (measure) into. Each resulting piece of pie represents one beat. You can eat the whole piece of pie, or just a part of it, depending on how hungry you are (how the music should sound).

97 Chapter 7: Joining the Rhythm Nation

Quarter notes: One piece at a timeMost pieces of music have four beats per measure. In essence, your master chef asks you to cut each pie into four equal pieces. When you divide some-thing into four, you get quarters. When you divide a measure into four parts, you also get quarters quarter notes.

A quarter note is represented by a black rounded notehead with one long stem. Because its so common, the quarter note has become the most popular and, hence, most recognizable note of all musicdom. Look at the notes in Figure 7-2. Recognize them? I told you so.

Figure 7-2: Count and

play quarter notes.

1,Count: 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4

Try playing the quarter note Gs in Figure 7-2 on your piano, using your right hand, 2nd finger (thats RH 2). (Chapter 5 tells you about fingering.) Begin by tapping your foot to the beat at a tempo of one tap per second. Count out loud 1, 2, 3, 4. Each time your foot taps the floor, play the next quarter note on the piano. When you reach the bar line, keep playing, tapping, and count-ing your way through the remaining measures.

Half notes: Half the pieReturning to the dessert table, if you cut a pie into quarters and you eat two pieces, you end up eating half the pie. Likewise, if you divide a measure of music into four beats and play a note that lasts for two beats, you can sur-mise that the two beats equal a half note.

Figure 7-3 shows you four measures with half notes and quarter notes. Notice that a half note looks similar to a quarter note with its rounded notehead and long stem, but the half notes notehead is open (hollow) instead of closed (filled in).

Figure 7-3: Save half

for me. 1,Count: 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4

99 Chapter 7: Joining the Rhythm Nation

Counting all the piecesAfter you know how to count, play, and hold the three main note values, try playing Figure 7-5 with a mix of all the different note lengths. Listen to the track and follow along in the music one time before you play. Ill admit that the songs melody doesnt exactly bring a tear to the eye; I used the same note throughout to help emphasize the rhythm created by combining the three note lengths.

Figure 7-5: Mixing

up all the notes.

1,Count: 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4

5 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4

9 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4

13 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4

Track 5

Faster Rhythms, Same TempoAs the masterpiece in Figure 7-5 shows, just because a measure has four beats in it doesnt mean that it can only have four notes. Unlike quarter, half, and whole notes (which I talk about in the preceding section), some notes last only a fraction of a beat. The smaller the fraction, the faster the rhythmic motion sounds because you hear more notes for every beat, or foot tap.

101 Chapter 7: Joining the Rhythm NationTo play the eighth notes in Figure 7-7, count the beat out loud as 1-and, 2-and, 3-and, 4-and, and so on. Every time your foot taps down, say a number; when your foot is up, say and. When theres a mix of eighth notes and quarter notes, continue counting all the eighth notes of the measure in order to stay on track.

Figure 7-7: Play and

count the eighths and

quarters.

1Count: and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and

3 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and

Sixteenth notes and moreBy dividing one quarter note into four separate parts, you get a sixteenth note. Two sixteenth notes equal one eighth note.

As with eighth notes, you can write sixteenth notes in two different ways: with flags or with beams. One sixteenth note alone gets two flags, while grouped sixteenth notes use two beams. Most often you see four sixteenth notes beamed together because four sixteenth notes equal one beat. And frequently, you see one eighth note beamed to two sixteenth notes, also because that combination equals one beat. Figure 7-8 shows examples of beamed sixteenth notes plus eighth notes joined to sixteenth notes.

Figure 7-8: Sixteen

going on sixteen.

1Count: e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a

To count sixteenth notes, divide the beat by saying 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, and so on. You say the numbers on a downward tap; the and is on an upward tap, and the e and a are in between. In a measure with a combination of eighths and sixteenths, you should count it all in sixteenth notes.

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Figure 7-15: You can

recognize the tunes

of three common

time signatures.

Old Mac Don- ald- had a farm

3 Here we go round the mul ber- ry- bush

7 Yan kee- doo dle- went to town, a rid- in- on a po ny-

Common time: 4/4 meterThe most common meter in music is 4/4. Its so common that its other name is common time and the two numbers in the time signature are often replaced by the letter C (see Figure 7-16).

Figure 7-16: The letter C

is a common

way to indicate 4/4

meter.

& c

In 4/4, the stacked numbers tell you that each measure contains four quarter note beats. So, to count 4/4 meter, each time you tap the beat, youre tapping the equivalent of one quarter note.

Track 8

To hear an example of 4/4 meter, play Track 8, A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight. Notice how the beat pattern of 4/4 meter creates an emphasis on beats 1 and 3, which are downbeats (although beat 1 has the strongest emphasis). Beats 2 and 4 are upbeats. In many rock, R&B, and hip-hop songs, the upbeats are accented. As you listen to the track, tap your foot on 1 and 3,