Intro. to Musical Notation and Staffs

Class Notes for August 15

Notes and page numbers come from Basic Music Theory – Jonathan Harnum, 2^nd ed. and Practical Theory – Sandy Feldstein

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Chapter 1 Prelude: An Ultra-Brief History of Musical Notation

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We are highly evolved.

Our pinna, the fleshy outer ear, transmits sound vibrations to the cochlea, one of the many tiny pieces of our inner ear.

The cochlea converts these vibrations into nerve impulses and sends them to the brain.

Thus, we human beings seek to organize sounds into patterns of rhythm and pitch. That is music!

In our history there are countless occurrences of equating music with the spiritual, the divine, and the psyche.

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As a current musical trend, music therapy has shown positive results in various kinds of medical rehabilitations. Music may help with the production of melatonin, an important chemical in the body. The use of music therapy in healing is increasing in credibility.

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Thus, we developed a written language that can record and communicate musical statements and ideas.

With this system we can share music across all levels, interest groups, and the globe.

Our western tradition of music notation is not the only system, nor is it the oldest.

Boethius, a Roman poet and philosopher, lived around 500 A.D. and wrote a famous treatise on music. It was the first use of Latin letters to represent musical sounds.

Monks in the monasteries of the Catholic Church adopted this system and also added their own improvements. They eventually created a system of neumes, or signs written above the text of a song to indicate duration, pitch (frequency), and movement between notes.

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This system continued to develop, and around 1000 A.D. Guido di Arrezo, a Benedictine monk who was thrown out of his monastery for his radical innovations, is credited with adding more lines to the musical staff.

Scholars believe that he invented the Guidonian Hand, a system for singing together by making signals with his hand.

Until this time music in the monastery was monophonic, meaning it only had one part. An example of this is a type of song called a chant or plain chant. These plain chants constitute some of the first examples of written Western music and are even used to this day in the Roman Catholic Church.

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Music eventually developed to having more than one part, called polyphonic music. Because this music was more complex, the notation system consequently needed to be able to show the other voices. Thus Guido di Arezzo expanded the staff to four, and then ultimately to five lines.

Composers continued to experiment with musical notation, but by about 1500 we arrived at a system that has remained virtually unchanged until today.

That being said, modern composers still experiment with notation to try to create different musical outcomes with their works.

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Chapter 2: Lines, Lines, Everywhere There’s Lines

All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard no horse sing a song. – Louis Armstrong

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When we discuss the musical staff and bar lines, these are things that you do not hear when listening to music, like the lines in a notebook, page turns in a book, etc.

The first kind of staff is a one-line staff.

A single line staff is a single line upon which we notate rhythms.

One line staves are good for instruments with one pitch or one sound such as a snare drum or bass drum. We will see this kind of staff when we isolate rhythm from pitch. Sometimes we will also use the middle line of a 5-line stave. Remember that the single line staff existed before the 5-line staff.

The majority of the time we will see the 5-line staff. This five-line staff, usually referred to simply as a staff because it is so common in musical notation, is a system of five lines upon which we write music: pitches and rhythms.

You can create and print your own blank staff paper for free at http://www.blanksheetmusic.net/

Instruments that play specific pitches (trumpet, flute, guitar, piano, etc.) use this staff. The five lines create four spaces between them.

Line 5----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                        Space 4

Line 4----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------           

                        Space 3

Line 3----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                        Space 2

Line 2----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                        Space 1

Line 1----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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When we count things in music we count up from the bottom.

            Staff Lines, Staff Spaces, Degrees of a Scale, Intervals, the strings of a guitar…

Memory Tip

Take your hand (left or right) and put it in front of you with your palm facing you. Those are the lines and spaces of the musical staff.

Musical sounds (low or high) are shown by the position of notes on the staff. Regardless of whether the note is on a line or a space, a note in a position closer to the top of the page than another has a higher pitch or frequency and vice versa for lower notes.

For now, think of the note as a target that aims on a specific line or space in the staff.

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Questions

What types of instruments use a one-line staff?

Why use a one-line staff?

How many lines make up a regular music staff?

How many spaces are contained within a regular music staff?

Draw a five line musical staff.

What is the number of the bottom line?

What is the number of the top line?

What is the number of the bottom space?

What is the number of the top space?

If you have not already done so, please purchase Sandy Feldstein’s Practical Theory textbook from the bookstore and complete Lesson 1: The Staff. Next class we will look at musical clefs.