Musical Language
Senior 1 · Music
Musical Language
Lesson 1 of 5
18 min
Think of a choir at a school in Huye learning a song for Heroes' Day. The conductor could sing every line again and again until everyone remembers it, or the choir could read the song from a page. Written music lets a singer or a player learn a tune they have never heard, and it works in the same way all over the world. In this unit you learn to read that written language.
Two things describe any musical sound. Pitch is how high or low the sound is: a whistle has a high pitch and a big drum has a low pitch. Duration is how long the sound lasts. Music writing shows both. This lesson is about where pitch is written.
Music is written on a staff (also called a stave; the plural is staves). A staff is a set of five horizontal lines with four spaces between them. The lines and the spaces are always counted from the bottom up: the bottom line is line 1 and the top line is line 5.
A note is written as an oval note head placed on the staff. Its height shows its pitch: the higher the note head sits on the staff, the higher the sound. Reading from left to right shows the order in time, just as you read words.
A note head can sit in only two kinds of place:
Moving from a line to the space just above it is one step up in pitch. Moving from that space to the next line is another step. So the staff climbs line, space, line, space, one step at a time.
Worked example
A note is on line 2 and a second note is in space 3. How many steps higher is the second note? Count each line and each space you pass: line 2 → space 2 → line 3 → space 3. That is 3 steps up.
Five lines are not enough for every pitch. When a note is too high or too low for the staff, short extra lines called ledger lines are drawn just for that note. Each ledger line is the same distance from the next as the staff lines are, so the steps continue in the same pattern: a note can sit on a ledger line or in the space next to it.
Notice two things in the diagram. Note 1 hangs just below the bottom line and note 5 sits just above the top line: these notes are still touching the staff, so they need no ledger line. And the ledger lines are only as wide as the note head; they never run across the whole staff.
Western music names its pitches with just seven letters: A B C D E F G. After G the letters start again at A. Each step up the staff moves to the next letter, and each step down moves back one letter. Which letter belongs to which line is set by a sign called a clef, which you will meet in the next lesson.
Worked example
A note is called C. Name the notes one, two and three steps above it. Counting up the alphabet: D, E and F. Now name the note one step below C: going backwards, it is B.
Tip
Every line and every space counts. When you count steps on the staff, touch each line AND each space as you go: line, space, line, space. Count from the bottom, like the floors of a building.
Try each question first, then check the worked solution underneath.
How many lines and how many spaces does a staff have?
Solution: Five lines and four spaces. The spaces are the gaps between the lines, so there is always one space fewer than lines.
A note is written on the middle line of the staff. Which line number is that?
Solution: Line 3. Counting from the bottom, there are two lines below it (lines 1 and 2) and two above it (lines 4 and 5).
How many steps is it from a note on line 1 up to a note on line 3?
Solution: 4 steps: line 1 → space 1 → line 2 → space 2 → line 3.
Which note is higher: one on line 4 or one in space 4?
Solution: The note in space 4. Space 4 lies between line 4 and line 5, so it is one step above line 4.
Name the notes one step and two steps above G.
Solution: A and B. After G the musical alphabet starts again at A, so one step above G is A and two steps above is B.
Remember
Sources and credits
The lesson text, the three staff diagrams, the worked examples and the practice were written by Ganzaa.
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
