Free Christmas Songs

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Pitch: The Highness or Lowness of a Sound

In music, we identify pitches by placing noteheads on a musical staff. A notehead is the oval section of a note and it can look like any of these examples:

Notehead examples:
Examples of noteheads

The section on rhythm will go into much greater detail on the durations represented by notes.

The staff consists of 5 parallel lines. The plural of the word staff is staves.

The Staff:
The blank staff

Pitches are named using the first seven letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F, G.

On the far left hand side of every staff is a clef. There are several different kinds of clefs, but the two most frequently used are the treble clef (also called the G clef) and the bass clef (also called the F clef).

The treble clef:
The treble clef

The bass clef:
The bass clef

Pitches are indicated by noteheads that either occur on the middle of a line on the staff, or in a space between two lines.

The clef determines the names of the pitches on the staff. Here is an interactive example of the grand staff, which consists of a treble clef and bass clef staff. The higher a note is on the staff, the higher its pitch is. The lower a note is on a staff, the lower its pitch is. Point to a note to see its name. Click on a note to hear what it sounds like when played by a piano.

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The meeting point between the two clefs is the pitch middle C. On the treble clef, it is the C that occurs just below the staff. On the bass clef, it is the C that occurs just above the staff. Middle C occurs in the middle of a piano keyboard.

Middle C in the treble clef staff:
Middle C on the treble clef staff

Middle C in the bass clef staff:
Middle C in the bass clef staff

Notice that there is something different in these examples. They both include ledger lines. Pitches that are higher or lower than the staff, include short horizontal lines which are called ledger lines.

Visit the practice page for exercises and assignments on the aspects of sound, and how to write noteheads.

For suggestions on how to accurately write noteheads, as well as free blank sheet music paper, visit www.Music-Paper.com

Read the next section on ledger lines.

 

 

 

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