The notes

Notes on the piano

When we think of music notes, we realize that music is a fundamental form of human expression that has existed for thousands of years. The very first written piece of music dates to around 1400 BC, but anthropologists believe humans have been making music much longer than that.

Musical notes are a way to transform this sound art form into something tangible, recorded in writing, so that it can be preserved, shared and performed by many musicians. There are many different rating systems that have been developed in various cultures.

Today we're going to look at the Western music notation system. We'll explain the basics of reading and writing music, and show you the benefits you could get from learning this skill.

Next, we'll cover a few other rating systems that might interest you. Ready to dive into the world of musical notes and discover the wonders of musical notation? So let's go !

A little history

The beginnings of modern Western notation can be traced to early medieval religious music, but examples of written representations of music existed long before that.

The oldest piece of written music we have is a tablet discovered in Babylonia (present-day Iraq). There is much debate about the interpretation of the notes, but it is generally accepted that this is music intended for a lyre, with the notations representing the different strings of the instrument. Other tablets found nearby indicate how to tune the lyre.

Other ancient forms of notation emerged with the musical performances of the ancient Greeks and the Byzantine Empire. However, the form of notation we recognize today has its origins in the early medieval church.

A Benedictine monk named Guido d'Arezzo is widely credited with originating the system of musical notation we use today. He developed a system of “solmization” which assigned a syllable to each note in a scale.

This system has survived in English-speaking countries under the names “do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si”. These syllables can be applied to any set of musical notes and can easily be transposed from one octave to another.

This gave rise to the AG alphabetic system that we use today to name notes. This is the fundamental concept on which Western musical notation is based.

How to read music notes

Now, let's focus on how musical notes are written these days, so we can start learning how to read them.

Modern musical notation uses a staff, which is made up of five parallel horizontal lines. These lines form a sort of grid on which we place the musical notes.

Notes are represented by ovals placed on or between these lines. The pitch of a note is indicated by its vertical position on the staff. The lower a note, the closer it is to the bottom of the staff, and the higher a note, the closer it is to the top of the staff.

In some cases, notes may even be placed above or below the five-line staff, and in this case, small extra lines called “extra lines” are added to indicate the precise position of the note.

Treble clef

The most popular key is called the treble clef or G clef. If you look at the symbol for a treble clef, you'll notice that it wraps around the second line from the bottom.

This indicates that this line represents the 'G' grade. Using this information, we can apply the letter grade system to show where the other grades fit. This musical note png clearly shows:

Bass key

The second most useful clef is the bass clef or bass clef. The bass clef is generally used for the left hand on the piano which plays lower sounds

The bass clef symbol selects the second in the top row as the note F. Again, from here we can use the alphabet to identify where all the other notes are.

How to retain them?

I wanted to share with you some very effective mnemonics that we talk about Annika Hope in an article in order to remember the position of the notes. They are in English.