Note Naming: Everything You Need to Know in 9 minutes

no naming everything you need to know so you don't fail music class in nine minutes one of the most important skills in learning to read and write music is note naming it's not unlike when you were learning to read and write you had to learn the alphabet the musical alphabet is a bit simpler because it's only seven letters long of course there are way more than seven notes in music in fact on a full piano keyboard there are 88 possible pitches but each one is named for one of those seven letters let's spend a few moments getting familiar with the piano keyboard even if you're learning another instrument the visual nature of the keyboard makes almost everything in music theory a little easier to demonstrate and understand although the piano can be a little intimidating at first glance there's actually a pretty simple pattern to it notice that the black keys come in a repeating pattern of two and then three over and over again it's important to realize that any two notes that are in the same relative position in that pattern of white and black notes are going to have the same name and sound pretty similar just higher or lower if we zoom in we can see that this key and this key are both in the same relative position in that pattern as is this one and this one and these two and that means that people who have higher voices can sing up here and people that lower voices can sing down here and they can sing together and it's going to sound pretty good and this applies across the entire keyboard on the piano most people orient themselves around C which is the white key to the left of the pair of Black Keys then we can go forwards in the alphabet and name all the white notes after C is d e f G a and B after that we're back to C which is always the one to the left of two black notes then the pattern just continues until you manage to memorize the keyboard knowing just one note and Counting up or down is a great shortcut next up is sharp notes and flat notes sharp notes are notated with this symbol and it means to raise the note by a semitone flats use this symbol which means to lower the note by a semitone so what's the semitone it's just the direct next key on the piano whether it's a black key or a white key so this note is C and if we go up a semitone we get C sharp up a semitone from D is d sharp this is F and F sharp G and G sharp and a and a sharp four flats this is D and down a semitone is D flat this is e and this is e flat this is G and G flat a and a flat and B and B flat you'll notice that the black notes have two names because you can approach them from below or above that phenomenon is known as enharmonic equivalent which refers to the fact that some notes have more than one name they're spelled differently but sound the same it's kind of like how some names have more than one spelling like John Mark or Kaitlin some of the white notes have two names too for instance this note is F but it's also possible to call it a sharp because it's up a semitone from E and this note is e but it's sometimes called F flat because it's a semitone below F same for C also known as B sharp and B also known as C flat and that's how to name every note on the piano next notation music is written on a special type of graph called a staff notes can come in a variety of shapes that indicate how long a note is but it's the vertical position of a note on the staff that indicates what pitch is to be played so these are all different pitches and these are all the same any of the 88 keys on the piano can be notated on the staff but with only 11 possible positions we need to to give context to the staff so we use a symbol called a clef the purpose of the clef is to let us know what part of the piano the staff is actually referring to it's kind of like how a graph doesn't really mean anything unless we add labels to add context to the information displayed let's start with the treble clef the bottom note of the treble clef is e and every success of space or line goes to the next note in the musical alphabet F G a b c d e and f if you have to go beyond the staff we can add more lines called ledger lines following the musical alphabet forwards it works the same way if we want to go lower we just go backwards in the alphabet the bottom line is e and below that is d then c b a.g there's really no limit to how many ledger lines you can use but too many can become difficult to read and it might be better to use a different clef like the bass clef bass clef follows the same basic principles as treble clef but lines up with the piano like this so the notes are different the bottom note of the bass clef is g as you go up the staff you get the next note in the musical alphabet a-b-c-d-e-f-g and a to go higher we just add more ledger lines above the staff following the musical alphabet forwards and to go lower we add ledger lines below the staff and follow the musical alphabet backwards the third most commonly used clef is called the alta clef it sits right in between the treble and bass clef it has F as the lowest note but otherwise works just like the treble and bass clef there are several other clefts but these three are the most common depending what instrument you play you'll have to learn the note names for one or more of these clefts there are basically three ways to remember your notes and they all have their own pluses and minuses the first one is the simplest just memorize them by rote if you're a beginner you're probably only learning a couple of notes at a time anyway so it shouldn't be that hard to just memorize one or two notes every few sessions the second way is to learn any one note on the staff and count up or down from there just like we did on the piano for instance the bottom note is a good place to start on treble clef it's e alta class starts on F and the bottom note of the bass clef is G alternatively you might find it useful to know that the trouble bass and alto clef are also known as the G clef f clef and C cuffs the shape of the trouble clef is based on a stylized G and also centers on and defines the note G the bass clef shape is based on a stylized F and the two dots surround and define the note F the Alta clef is centered on and defines the middle C of the piano the third way is to use a mnemonic device where the letters of a word or sentence remind you of the letter names of the lines or spaces the easiest one is the spaces of the treble clef because they spell out the word face for the lines a popular mnemonic is every good boy does fine alternatively feel free to come up with your own like excited gorillas breakdance flawlessly for the bass clef you could use a mnemonic for the spaces like all cows eat grass or all cats eat goldfish which they definitely would if given the chance for the lines a common option as good boys do fine always but if you happen to find great big dragons from Alberta to be a bit more memorable that's fine too finally here's a couple of mnemonic options for the altar cloth whether you prefer repetition a touchstone note or a mnemonic device learning to quickly and accurately name notes is an important skill for musicians there's just a few other rules for note naming they mostly have to do with accidentals which is another name for sharps and flats first although we talk about sharp and flat notes by saying the letter and then the accidental like C sharp and a flat it's actually written on the staff with the accidental before the note it's a bit like how most currencies are written we say $100 but write the dollar sign before the number if you turn it around it would look pretty weird another important rule is that accidentals lasts for the whole bar so if you have an f-sharp here any F for the rest of the bar is also sharp it's a lot easier to read this knowing that all the FS are sharp rather than this which is way more cluttered when we get to the bar line any accidentals that were in the previous bar no longer apply so the FS are sharp in the first bar but in the second bar they're just regular F if you did want to have a sharp note followed by a regular note in the same bar we use a third type of accidental called the natural it looks like this and it refers to the regular and unaltered note not sharp or flat so you might see something like this if you wanted to switch back and forth between a sharp or flat note and it's natural it could get a little cluttered and difficult to read but if you'll remember that some notes have two names like D sharp and E flat as well as F sharp and G flat you can rewrite these bars like this which is a lot easier to read but still sounds the same the last thing is something called key signatures which are a musical notation that indicate which notes are sharp or flat in a piece of music for instance this says that all B's E's and A's are flat a notation like this affects all these notes however any note can be changed by adding accidentals which would override the key signature and that's just about everything you need to know about no naming remember to Like comment share and subscribe and check the description for links to more videos thanks for watching

Channel: Brad Harrison Music

Views: 828,553

Keywords: music, music ed, music education, music lesson, lesson, music theory, theory, materials of music, how to not fail music class, made easy, for dummies, help, note naming, piano, piano keyboard, treble clef, clef, treble, alto, bass, alto clef, bass clef, accidentals, enharmonic, enharmonic equivalent, sharps and flats, sharp, flat, notes, name of notes

Id: exTi3gFBVFU

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 29 2019