Music Theory Unplugged Fundamentals

Music Theory Unplugged By Dr. David Salisbury

Fundamentals Introduction The notion of transmitting music from musician to musician either orally or in notated form is as old as music itself. Many systems have been devised in musical cultures throughout the world. Music is a language and consequently has the same concerns as any language including vocabulary, grammatical structure and contextual relationships. It is therefore necessary to establish the basic structures and terminology that will initially be the building blocks of a more comprehensive theoretical knowledge.

1.1 Notational Basics Notation is a formalized system used to transmit musical ideas from one musician to another. A citation from the Wikipedia free online encyclopedia states:

The ancestors of modern symbolic music notation originated in the Catholic church, as monks developed methods to put plainchant (sacred songs) to paper. The earliest of these ancestral systems, from the 8th century, did not originally utilise a staff, and used neums (or neuma or pneuma), a system of dots and strokes that were placed above the text. Although capable of expressing considerable musical complexity, they could not exactly express pitch or time and served mainly as a reminder to one who already knew the tune, rather than a means by which one who had never heard the tune could sing it exactly at sight.

(Wikipedia-2004-http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_notation). The point is the more defined the system of transmission or notation and the more ability a musician has to translate that into live or real music the more the listener can appreciate the art and skill that went in to produce it whether on a concious or subconcious level.

1.1.1 Staves and the Grand Staff Our first point of departure is a way of representing what is happening aurally, visually starting with five (5) parallel lines laid out horizontally across the page called a staff or stave (see Example 1.1). This give us the ability to show the relationship of each pitch higher or lower depending on its position higher or lower on, above or below the five lines and when and how long each pitch occurs over time as you scan across the page from left to right much like reading a sentence or paragraph in a book.


(Example 1.1) When two staves are connected with a bracket on the ends it becomes a grand staff (see Example 1.2).

(Example 1.2) A grand staff is used predominantly for piano music and usually contains a treble clef sign on the upper staff and a bass clef sign on the bottom staff (see Example 1.3).

(Example 1.3) When a staff is divided vertically with straight lines this creates units of time called bars or measures. A double vertical line shows the end of a musical section, however when found at the end of a piece of music there is usually one thin vertical line followed by one thicker vertical line (see Example 1.4).

(Example 1.4) The treble clef on the top staff is so named because the sounds or pitches placed on that staff are higher in sound. The treble clef is also called the G clef because the curl in the bottom part of the staff curls around the G line. The bass clef on the bottom staff is so named because the sound or pitches


placed on that staff are lower in sound. The bass clef is also called the F clef because the two dots are on either side of the F line. Therefore the function of a clef sign then is to identify the pitch name of a particular line in order to establish were all of the other pitches occur on the staff. In music we use seven letters to identify all pitches across all ranges, high or low, of the music we play. These letters are A, B, C, D, E, F and G. These letters are then repeated over and over again at a subsequent higher or lower sounding pitch and therefore establishes a founding principle of music we will call the principle of cycles. The principle of cycles quite simply when applied to the naming of pitches is that when one has used up all of the notes, pitches or letters of a Key, Mode or Scale, you start over again and repeat them once more, for example: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G etc. It is in this way that we are able to use only (7) seven letters of the alphabet to express all of the notes on an 88 key Grand Piano from the lowest A] to the highest C. There are many ways to remember the pitches in relation to the lines and spaces on either the treble or bass clef staves. One of the most familiar and accepted ways is to associate a word with each line or space, for example in the treble clef starting on the first or bottom line and moving upwards through the rest of the five lines we end up with the following phrase or one similar: (E)very (G)ood (B)oy (D)eserves (F)ruit, notice that (G) occurs on the second line already determined by the treble or (G) clef sign as described previously. The spaces between these lines coincidently spell out a word already: (F) (A) (C) (E) spells FACE and rhymes with SPACE (see Example 1.5).

(Example 1.5) What is unclear in this type of method is the inter-relationship between the lines and spaces and the overall continuity between the Treble and Bass clefs. The other problem with this system is that it does not comply with the principle of cycles. In order for any system to work effectively as a continuous system in music it must follow the above stated principle of cycles by cycling through all the elements of a series in this case all seven letters. Looking at the two systems above one of lines and one of spaces it is clear that in the system for lines there are only (5) five letters and that in the system for spaces there are only (4) four letters meaning that in the system of lines


there are two letters missing and in the system of spaces there are three letters missing. In addition by focusing on the lines and spaces as two different systems one does not see the inter-relationship between the two, that is in the system for lines we are simply skipping every other letter of the alphabet starting on (E) and that the letters skipped are in fact the letters of the spaces in between each pair of two lines, consequently when you put the two of them together you would get (lines in bold, spaces in italics): E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F. Note that we have already started another cycle by the time we get to the fourth space (E) before the last line (F). Furthermore once you have come to the end of the fifth line your dilemma would be the inability to effectively determine notes above as well as notes that start before the first line below the staff or apply this system to other clefs. This dilemma became clear to me when teaching younger students (littlies) how to play the piano. After introducing them to the Treble clef or right hand system, they would then shown the Bass clef or left hand system and they invariably express their frustration at learning a whole other system and having to keep track of the both systems. After getting this reaction consistently over a period of time it seemed logical to agree that they were right! Therefore after years of working with students and encountering the confusion this brings about, we come to the conclusion that there is the need for only one system and that this system should apply to notes above and below the staves, called ledger lines because we draw in the subsequent lines as we go higher or lower away from the staff and in either bass or treble clef. In order to create a unified system that meets these needs it was necessary to only add two more letters to the lines system in the Treble clef and therefore complete the cycle of all seven letters. Now the phrase reads Every Good Boy Deserves Fish And Chips (see Example 1.6)

(Example 1.6)

Notice that when we get to (C) Chips we need to show the previous ledger lines accordingly so that (C) Chips has two ledgers lines one below it for the (A) line and one through the middle of it for the (C) line (spacing between lines is exaggerated). Example 1.7 below shows how the system works for both


the Bass and Treble clefs. Note that in between the Bass and Treble clefs there is only one line (Middle C) and that is because traditionally the practice has been to put an exaggerated distance between the two staves in order to show the separation between the two for ease of reading each hand in piano or organ literature. The intervallic or pitch distance between the top line of the Bass clef and the bottom line of the Treble clef is the usually the same as it is between the first and third, second and fourth or third and fifth lines in each clef. It seems unusual to use the term usually because it would appear that we are trying to establish founding principles and yet a second principle or possibly an addendum to any principle discussed in this book would be that there is always an exception to the rule. The Example 1.7 below starts with (E)very on the ledger line below the bottom line in the Bass clef using only the beginning letters and going through the cycle twice continued up through the treble in order to show the continuity between the two clefs.

(Example 1.7)

You can see that Middle C is the dividing point between the Bass and Treble clef systems as well as the middle of the piano and pitch range with slightly more range above Middle C. In order to find any note that may occur on a space simply count up from either the line below the staff in Bass clef or the bottom line in Treble clef to the line just below the space you are trying to determine and simply go to the next letter in the alphabet. So for example if you were trying to figure out the next note on the space after C above the Treble staff it would be D. Next there is the concept of units of measurement or ungrouped versus grouped.

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Music Theory Unplugged Fundamentals