Music Theory 1: Ask the staff about their Movable C clefs!

I guess I signed up to discuss jazz music theory, however in order to get to that topic we need to first catch everyone up to speed about regular music theory. Most theory programs at an advanced level are split into different classes, since there is quite a bit of detail in each subsection of them. My college split theory into 5 separate class families, each with 4 semesters of classes within. For the purposes of these posts I will be focusing on what my education referred to as 'harmony', which is how tones and chords interact with each-other. I should add that I am a pianist by trade, and so my examples will be presented accordingly.

To start, however, we need to be able to read a bit of music. This is a staff. Five lines, no frills, tells us nothing. In order to know what those lines mean, at the beginning of each staff there is a a symbol called a clef. There are three types of clefs:
Treble Bass and Movable C.

Please notice that I included the trebel and bass clefs on a staff, but left the movable c out of one. This is so you do not get confused. The trebel clef always has that little curlycue around the second line from the bottom (which is the note 'G' under this clef, granting it the secondary name of 'g clef'). The bass clef is always around the second line from the top (under the same rule as the trebel clef, this is called the 'f clef').

The movable c clef is the most interesting, as wherever the line or space at the center of the point in the middle of it lies is considered to be the note C (usually middle C, more on this later). The g and f clefs can be used in this manor too, but this goes against the will of the Lord Jesus Christ and such sin will not enter this document. The movable c clef is the most common of the movable clefs anyways.

Since all this noise about clefs has gotten everyone all hot and bothered, I suppose we can actually return to our subject of the staff. This here is a grand staff: which is notable in that it combines the two previously discussed clefs in one easy to read format. Notice the little bracket on the far left binding the two staves and associated clefs together. The clefs define which notes are what on the staff. Our staff needs notes, which are usually represented by circles, and circles with lines coming off of them. Look familiar? These are called eighth notes, and they determine the length in which the note is played, but we don't really care about that for the purposes of this discussion. What we care about is what tones the notes represent, and to get to that involves a sidetrack, which will be covered in a subsequent post (I was about halfway through writing all of this and realized that it was probably getting to be a bit much for a first post).

So to present at a base level, most western music functions around the concept of the 'chromatic scale', which is the term for the sequential ordering of all notes represented by western theory. The easy way to think about this is its comprised of 7 notes + 5. The first 7 are A, B, C, D, E, F, G, after which point the notes begin again at A. As you go higher in the alphabet, you go higher in represented tones as well. B is higher than A, and so on and so forth. Obviously with only 7 basic terms, you're going to run into a nomenclature error, so they start getting called 'high a' and 'low a', 'middle a', and so forth. Without getting too far ahead with intervals, differing tones of a similar letter are called 'octaves'. If you play an A, then do not play the next A higher, but instead the one after that, you are playing an A that is two octaves above the first A. Additionally, if you look on a piano, the notes A, B, C, D, E, F, and G are represented entirely by the white keys, thus proving once and for all that whites are truly the master race.

So what about this +5? These 'black keys' are defined entirely by their masters, and are forced to take subservient names. What's worse, is depending on context (ownership) the notes are forced into holding different name prefixes! So there is a note which is A# (A-Sharp), which is the same note as B♭(B-Flat). I'll explain the contextual changes later, because while they are the same note they function differently, and there's a good reason there is two names for it. A sharp is a note that has been 'augmented', or raised. A flat is a note that has been 'diminished', or lowered. Consequently, our list of sharps is A#, C#, D#, F#, G#. Hey look, +5 notes of playing. My bard is getting AWESOME. Those notes, in the same order, are B♭, D♭, E♭, G♭, A♭. The astute reader may notice that there is no B# or C♭, and may be questioning why that is. The answer is SCREW YOU INTERVALS WILL BE COVERED LATER.

So our chromatic scale is comprised of all of these notes put into sequence. The scale changes depending on if we are ascending or descending. A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G# and A♭, G, G♭, F, E, E♭, D, D♭, C, B, B♭, A. That gives us our 12 (if you've ever heard of 12 tone music, now you know what the origin of that phrase is). We can then look at it on the staff!



You may notice that these are open circles with no tails attached, as the notes above had. These are called whole notes, and are played for 8 times longer a duration than the eighth notes previously shown. The logical conclusion that one should reach here is that musical notation shows ratios as its instructionary method. You may also notice that this image starts and ends with C instead of A. This is a convention of piano (C is the easiest key to play in for the beginner), but should also serve to point out that the chromatic scale (and consequently ALL scales, keys, etc) has no defined beginning or end point, and can be started at any point along the tone continuum.

That should serve well for a first bit, I think. REVIEW AND COMMENT PLZ ^_^;;V Feedback and criticism are generously welcomed, as is fanfic about the author. Thanks for reading!