Dynamics

   There is another set of Italian terms that helps determine how loudly or how quietly you play the music. Pianissimo (pp) means that you play the music very quietly. The decibel is the way you know how intense the sound is, but most pieces of music just use the symbols. Piano is the next "level" up from pianissimo. The suffix,-issimo, means "very."

In the same way, it world with forte and fortissimo. Forte means loud while fortissimo means very loud. If you want something to be even louder, you would call it forississimo. Mezzo piano and mezzo forte are in between piano and forte. "Mezzo" means moderate so, when you add forte, it means moderately loud. Mezzo piano means moderately soft.

  

Tempo

   The tempo of a piece of music tells us how fast or slowly we should play the music. On the right, I provided a chart of the terms and their definitions. The terms are all in Italian and some of them we can see English words that we may recognize. For example, accelerando means to speed up. We have the word accelerate in English that means the same thing.

   Moderato, looks like moderate, means to play at a medium pace. Other terms, like grave, can be easier to remember. The word looks exactly like our word, grave. We can remember it by thinking that the corpses decompose very, very slowly. For some of the other terms, you just have to learn and possibly make your own mnemonic devices.

Rests

The notes don't have to always be making sound. The places where you take a break are called rests. Just like the notes, there are rests that are held for different amount of times. They have the same names as the notes, only "rest" is at the end instead of "note." Whole notes are equal to whole rests. The whole note is played for four beats and held for four beats. Whole rests are just held without any sound for the four beats.

   Whole rest are usually on a line and it looks like a hole or an upside down hat. The half rest looks like a hat. The most common rest is a quarter rest and is held for a beat. The smaller rests look like sevens. As the nots get smaller, the rests add a line at the top. The chart above helps illustrate this.

Rhythm notes/Time signature

   The notes aren't always played at the same beat. There are quarter notes, eighth notes, whole notes, sixteenth notes, etc. The time signatures determine the rhythm of the music. The most common time signature is 4/4. The top note represents how many beats are in a measure, the sections a piece of music is divided into. The bottom note determines which note gets the beat. There is a small "rap" that younger people say when they are learning the time signature.  For example, in 4/4, it goes like this, "Four beats in every measure and the quarter note gets the beat." A quarter is 1/4. This is how you know that the four on the bottom is the quarter note that gets the beat.

   The whole note gets all of the beats in that measure, four beats in 4/4. Half notes are equal to half of the whole note. This continues for the rest. Two quarter notes are equal to a half note, two eighth notes are equal to a quarter note, and two sixteenth notes are equal to one eight note. Quarter notes usually are equal to one beat. When counting whole notes, half notes and quarter notes, you can just count the beats with regular numbers (1,2,3,4..) When you are dealing with an eighth note, you count by saying, "one and, two and, etc." Sixteenth notes are counted by saying "one-E-and-A (uh)."  

Key Signatures

You can use accidentals in differant key signatures. Having different key signatures makes music sound more interesting. There are major and minor keys. Most of them are major. For example, there is C major, G major, A major, et al.

The key signatures can be determined by using the "Circle of Fifths." As you go around the circle clockwise, one sharp is added to the staff until there are five sharps. Then, there are six flats and the amount decreases. The key with no accidental is called the key of C. The fifth note, that comes next, is G. This means that the key of G is the key with only one sharp. This is continued throughout the circle. Knowing the different key signatures can be tricky to remember at first, which I still struggle with sometimes, but gets easier over time.

Solfege

 When singing, people use a system where you can see the patterns of the notes. This system is easier than saying the note names out loud. The symbols are Do (doh), Re (ray), Mi (me), Fa (fah), Sol (soh), La, Ti (tea), Do. Do is is usually C but when the keys change, the solfege also changes. After the highest Do, the system continues to repeat, just like the note names.

The most famous song that is associated with this is in the musical, "The Sound of Music." Julie Andrews, who played Maria in the movie, was teaching the children solfege and associated the symbols with common words or phrases. For example, Julie Andrews started the song at "Do, a deer, a female deer. Re, a golden block of sun." and so on. The children seem to get how it works and follow her on their bikes singing the song. This song is a very catchy song but it is very helpful in remembering solfege.   

Solfege Song from Sound of Music

Location of Notes on a Keyboard

The white notes are labeled C (on the base clef)
through C (on the treble clef)  

 

     The notes on the staff can be located on the piano. In the diagram at the right, the keyboard starts on C in the base clef. The white keys are the notes A through G that were discussed in yesterday's post. The black keys are either a half step up or a half step down from the note right next to it. These are called accidentals.

    If you are going up, the accidentals are called sharps (#). For instance, C# is the black key right above C. A# is the half step up from A and so on. Sometimes music likes to trick people by saying E# or B# when it really just means to play F or C. Sharps are a half step above the notes. Just like sharps, flats (♭) go a half step down. The most commonly used flats are B♭ , E♭, and A♭. The flats that go down and are still white keys are C♭ and F♭. C♭ is B and F♭ is E. This concept may seem strange at first but after a while, you get used to it.