Tag: musictheory

Teach Yourself Music Theory – 7.) Rhythmic Values of Notes and Rests

When someone says that a particular piece of music has a nice rhythm, they are referring to the pattern of durations of pitch and silences. Pitch as to the notes played, and silence as the rests telling the performer not to do anything.

Each note value has a corresponding rest value of the same name as well as duration:

In a simple meter of 4/4, the quarter/crotchet is the basic beat unit. When you combine two together, you get a half/minim duration value of two beat units. That can be combined even further into whole/semibreve value, and EVEN LARGER into a breve. Understand that only the whole/semibreve is the largest unit that can fit within the meter of a 4/4 time signature measure.

Similarly, the durations can be divided into smaller units. Dividing a quarter/crotchet in half gets an eighth/quaver. Further in half gets a sixteenth/semiquaver. And so on, and so on…

Notice how as the duration values of the notes progressively get smaller, the more flags and beams (wavy lines and connecting horizontal bars, respectively) there are attached to the stem (vertical line) of the note.

Finally, take a look at the measure below:

See how that there is a dot next to the note head? The dot tells that the duration is 1.5x times that of the original. A double-dot tells that it 1.75x times in durational length.


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Teach Yourself Music Theory – 6.) Those Sick Beats

Being in the music industry, I find too often people trying to make a living by selling “beats,” implying that the word is synonymous to their cool groove they spent hours on with their laptop program for upcoming rap artists that are so fire. Let’s make this clear…

A beat is the pulse in a piece of music. That’s it. When you are listening to your favorite song, you are more than likely tapping your foot or nodding your head in-time to the beat. Of course, you might be hearing some notes that appear on the beat – or within the beat. In the grand hierarchy scheme of things, the notes that appear between the main pulse are part of the beat divisions or subdivisions.

But now we need a framework; so we incorporate meter, which is how beats are divided and grouped into larger recurring units giving emphasis to certain beats. You have already seen this in place on a score with the use of measures grouping notes together and having the bar lines on the staff separate the measures from one another.

The first beat of a measure is called a downbeat and gets the most power. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the upbeat which is the lightest and appears before the downbeat on the last beat of the previous measure. So just before the bar line.

So the first way to categorize meter is by how the primary beat is divided. If the beat is easily divided in two, then it is a simple meter. On the other hand, if the beat is divided into three, then it is called a compound meter.

Groups of two or groups of three essentially. Now, the next way to categorize is by how many groups there are. If there are two groups of two/three, then it is called duple meter. Three groups mean it is triple meter, and four groups is quadruple meter. So, if we have three groups of beats that are easily divided into two, we should call it: simple triple meter.

In the examples shown, you’ve probably seen two numbers that somewhat look like a fraction found in math. These “fractions” are your meter/time signatures that tell you the meter type. The top number tells how many primary pulses are within a measure, and the bottom tells the beat unit — more on that to come next time!


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Teach Yourself Music Theory – 5.) General Guide To Intervals

An interval is the distance between two different pitches/notes. The two different notes can either occur at the same time (called a harmonic interval) or consecutively one after another (called a melodic interval).

The smallest, and most basic, interval used in Western music is the semitone/half-step. A semitone is the distance traveled from one key on a piano to the next adjacent key. Combining two semitones together make a whole-step. Half- and whole-steps make up a lot of the fundamentals understanding different aspects of music.

Now, what do we call intervals that aren’t two notes right next to each other? Below is a graph that I’ll explain:

The first process of finding the name of any interval is counting how many semitones it is made of. Start with the lowest note of the pair and count on the keyboard how many semitones are traveled to reach the higher pitch. From there, look at the letter names. How far apart are they? Remember: the letter names go in a repeating ascending order of – A B C D E F G A B C D … From there, you can find on the graph above what to name the interval.

So, say you went from middle C to G3. G3 is lower than middle C (otherwise known as: C4), so let’s count up from there. Middle C is five semitones above G3. Counting letter names we get: G A B C , which means a distance of three letter names were traveled. From all this information, we can conclude that this is a perfect fourth of P4 in abbreviation.

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Teach Yourself Music Theory – 4.) Accidentals (Which Are No Accident)

Sometimes when looking at a score, you might have noticed an odd looking symbol next on the left side of the note head, which is the oval part of a note. These symbols are called accidentals, and they modify the notated pitch.

The first is the sharp, which looks like a (#) and tells the performer to raise the pitch up to the next closest pitch. Remember those black keys on the keyboard? Well, we can finally give them names as such:

After that is the flat, which looks like a (b) and tells the performer to lower the pitch down to the next closest pitch. So those black keys would also have these names in place, too:

But wait. The G# is in the same spot as an Ab, and a B# is where C already is? Is this possible?? Indeed it is, and we call this an enharmonic, when there are two or more names for a pitch.

Now in some extreme cases, you might see a double-sharp, which looks like an (x) and tells to raise up two consecutive pitches; and a double-flat, which looks like a (bb) and likewise tells to lower down two consecutive pitches. So Ebb is an enharmonic of a D.

To wipe the slate clean and tell that a letter name should be back in the original white key space, use a natural sign as seen last in the first picture above.


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Tip #15 – Colors in a Delayed Cadence

In a world where perfection is held high, imperfection can & should shine just as bright with its own uniqueness. Modern academics in composition teach how to write perfect cadential figures, but they should not be look as an end-all-be-all as how to conclude a musical idea.

Beautiful colors can bleed into the holes of a cadential phrase by delaying the resolution of a voice (usually the melody) with a suspension or appoggiatura. Eventually, it will resolve on a weaker beat, but the goal is to land on a tone not typically found in the cadential chord.


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Teach Yourself Music Theory – 3.) Naming Pitch Registers Correctly

To start off, take a look at the grand staff with all the different pitches notated. While they are all different with their placement vertically on the staff – heck, some utilize ledger lines, those extra lines above/below the staves – all of those pitches do have something in common: they are all C. That means this collection of pitches are in the same pitch class, or notes that are octave-related and have the same letter name.

Left to Right: C1, C2, C3, C4, C4 (repeated), C5, C6, C7

Remembered how we numbered pitches before from left to right on a keyboard, which is how we got C4 to be middle C? This is the act for naming registers. Starting with the first C and naming it C1, everything above and below the consecutive C is in the 1 category for their letter name. And this continues on and on. Any pitches before C1 will be numbered with a 0.

So, if I was to write a G between C4 and C5 vertically on the grand staff, it would be called G4 because it is higher than C4, but lower than C5.

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Tip #9 – Fun with Retrograde

Want to do something sonically and acoustically creative, but not exactly sure on how to develop a melodic theme? Try using retrograde techniques!

As the name implies, retrograde means doing something backwards. Think of it like a mirror copy of the original. For example in practice, take a small (or large – whatever you prefer) melodic idea:

Now, copy and write the new melody in the following measures as if you placed a mirror across the bar line. Notice how the pitches and rhythm reflect over the bar line in backwards to ow it was originally written.

While retrograde typically involves repeating backwards the phrase on both levels of pitch frequency and rhythm, a composer can experiment by dropping one of them. What if we took the rhythm factor out of retrograde, and just had the pitches go backwards? It would look something like this:

And now the other way around: only keeping the rhythm in retrograde.


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Tip #8 – Finding That Melodic Pair with Contrary Motion

Have you ever noticed that when we ask a question, our voices tend to wander higher in pitch? Even as you were reading that pervious question, the voice in your head must have had direction in their tone, contour, and phrasing. When someone answers a question, the voice goes in the opposite motion and lowers in pitch.

Sure, can you find examples where this does not happen? Yeah, but it is a phenomenon of a natural occurrence of contrary motion in contour.

Say you have a melodic fragment, and idea, that needs some kind of “answer” to it. First, observe the melodic intervals, direction, and shape of the melodic line.

Now, flip that shape upside-down in your head. For example: if it went up, have the melody go down now in roughly the same interval area. This adds a complemental structure to the melody.


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Tip #7 – Extreme Dovetailing

Continuing with the idea of alternating between instruments, there is the technique of dovetailing. As the definition already goes, dovetailing is when things interlock with each other at some joint area. Melodically in music, dovetailing is when a relatively incomplete music idea is carried out by another voice starting from where the original voice ended. Typically, there is usually at least one note of overlap, but these rules can easily be diverted from – so long as there is a sense of flow instead of alternation.

Inspired by the guitar technique of “chicken picken’ ” where a guitarist plays a chord or melody between alternating sounds of pick, mute, bend, cluck, etc. – we get this extreme for of dovetailing that can be applied to any music ensemble.

Take an original melodic line:

Now, look at the ensemble. Find where their ranges overlap. You might need to transpose the melody to a shared octave so that there are no jumps between voices. After doing so, break up the melodic line between the different members of the ensemble. Remember, having some melodic overlap is okay, in fact, probably even better. However, this example does not do so. Finally, experiment with having each instrument do different techniques. It would come out looking similar to this:

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Teach Yourself Music Theory – 2.) Understanding Dynamics

When you are listening to your favorite music on your device, you increase the volume if it needs to be loud – and vice verse, decrease the volume when it needs to be quiet.

In music notation, there are dynamics, which are symbols used to indicate to the performer how loud or soft to play. Below on the grand staff, or the treble and bass clef connected by a curly brace, you will notice letters underneath the notes. Those are the dynamic symbol abbreviations used to tell how loud/soft an instrument is to play until the next dynamic is mentioned. Typically, they are to always go below the staff (or in the middle of a grand staff); but for situations involving vocalists or for separating the upper stave of the grand staff, they should be put above.

The most commonly used dynamics symbol abbreviations (going from softest to loudest) are: pianissimo (pp), piano (p), mezzo piano (mp), mezzo forte (mf) forte (f), fortissimo (f). Piano meaning “soft,” and forte meaning “strong.”

In the rare case you need to go beyond and hit the extreme ends of volume, add an “issi” to it and another letter. Ex.: pianississimo (ppp)

If you want to notate a gradual change in the volume, try using these shapes:

A cone/hairpin with the open end on the right is a crescendo that tells the performer to get louder. If it was facing the opposite direction of ” > ” instead of ” < ” then is it a diminuendo/decrescendo that tells the performer to gradually decrease in sound.

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