FIRST STEPS ON MUSICAL LANGUAGE

 

1) Basic definitions  

MUSIC is the art of combining sounds and time properly.  

PULSE is the inner beat of Music, that is, the `heart’ of Music, that beats at regular time intervals. In listening to music it will be noticed that there is a steady beat to which one could clap. This is called the Pulse or Beat. Taking this into account, it is possible to organize the durations of sounds (pulse = `dan’):

 

 

 

Some beats os pulses will be stronger than others, and are called ACCENTS. The beats usually fall into regular groups of two or three, the first of each group being an accent: 

  

A STAVE consists of a series of five parallel lines. Notes can be placed on the lines or in the spaces between the lines. Lines and spaces are always reckoned from the lowest upwards.

CLEF is a mark that is placed at the beginning of the stave, and it becomes the clue to the names of the notes that are written on the stave. The Treble clef circles the second line and fixes that line as G, so that a note on that lines represents a sond called G (`sol’ in Spanish). This clef is also known as G clef. 

The number of beats from one accent to another divides the music into equal measures, each of which is called a BAR. In order to show where these divisions come, vertical lines are placed across the stave. They are called BAR-LINES.

In music notation, a NOTE VALUE indicates the relative duration of a note. Note values have different names: semibreve, minim, crotchet, quaver... 

Periods of silence are shown by signs called RESTS. Each rest equals the duration of the note value that has the same name:

2) The Note-value table

Watch the equivalences:

- A semibreve equals two minims.

- A minim equals two crotchets.

- A crotchet equals two quavers. 

 

Activity 1: Complete the following sentences with the missing words:  

a) A semibreve equals ______ crotchets.

b) A minim equals ______ quavers.

c) A semibreve equals ______ quavers.

  

3) Basic time-signatures 

The time of a music piece is shown by the time-signature, and it is placed immediately after the clef at the beginning of the piece:

 

 The time-signature consists of two numbers placed one above the other. The upper number shows how many beats there are in a bar, and the lower one shows the value of each beat.