SHOSYS ACADEMY 5 LESSON: Knowledge Of Ways: Conventions Of Staff Notation
Kelvin Sholar
1 Introduction To The Blog Series
This series of lessons and tests incorporates an easy music appreciation curriculum for adult beginners who are remote learning, or are self-taught. Lessons are posted on Mondays while Tests are posted on Saturdays. For more in depth and private guidance, I offer personal instruction by Zoom (Personal Meeting ID 8522954569) – for 1 dollar a minute. Time schedules range from a minimum of 30 minutes to a maximum of 60 minutes. Email me at [email protected] to set up personal instruction. I accept payments and cash gifts by Cash App ($KelvinSholar), Zelle ([email protected]) or Paypal (paypal.me/kelvinsholar).
2 Knowledge Of Ways And Means Of Dealing With Specifics
In Lesson 4, we learned about specific facts of music, including chronological sequences of styles. In this Lesson, we will learn about conventions of staff notation. This knowledge resides in the ways and means of dealing with specifics branch (1.20) of the Tree of Knowledge (1.00), at the third leaf from the left (1.21) – Conventions. In “Taxonomy Of Educational Objectives”, Benjamin Bloom describes ways and means of dealing with specifics as: “Knowledge of the ways of organizing, studying, judging, and criticizing ideas and phenomena” (Bloom 68). Bloom describes conventions as “Knowledge of characteristic ways of treating and presenting ideas and phenomena“ (Bloom 69).
As we have previously learned about specifics in its dedicated branch of knowledge, we now learn about the ways to organize them. Ways to organize specifics is a more abstract form of knowledge, because it concerns knowledge about the methods by which specifics are connected, as well as ways, knowledge of processes to deal with specifics and processes to evaluate them. Specifics are the results of processes while ways are the processes themselves. Specifics can be known by observation, experiment and discovery – while processes are known by definition or agreement among musicians (Bloom 69).
2.1 Knowledge Of Ways: Conventions
Conventions of staff notation refers to the common practice of writing music in Western cultures, as well as, common symbols, terms and rules of use.
The staff is like a graph of pitch with respect to time. It is composed of five horizontal lines and spaces- all of which represent given pitches. Notes representing a given pitch at a given time are placed on the appropriate line, space or ledger line (i.e. line above or below the staff). For example, in the following staff notation of “Mary Had A Little Lamb” four pitches requires the use of lines, spaces and ledger lines:
In the staff notation of “Mary Had A Little Lamb“, we notice that the first sign is a G or treble clef. According to Roger Kamien: “A clef is placed at the beginning of the staff to show the pitch of each line and space. The two most common clefs are the treble clef, used for relatively high ranges (such as those played by a pianist’s right hand), and the bass clef, used for relatively low ranges (played by the pianist’s left hand)” (Kamien 34).
Pianists read musical notation via a grand staff; it has both treble and bass clefs. See the following staff notation example:
Notice in the following grand staff how notes have stems that go up or down, depending on whether they are placed above or below the middle of the staff; (up when above, low when below). Notes have flags when separate, and of small time-values (or distances between beats). Notes have beams when they are connected, and of small time-values.
When a silence occurs in staff notation we have a rest sign; thus, there are four rest signs in “Mary Had A Little Lamb“; and they occur at the end of measures two, three, four and eight.
According To Roger Kamien, a time signature (or meter signature): “shows the meter of a piece. It appears at the beginning of the staff at the start of a piece (and again later if the meter changes) and consists of two numbers, one on top of the other. The upper number tells how many beats fall in a measure; the lower number tells what kind of note gets the beat” (Kamien 35). For example. the time or meter signature 3/4 means three beats fall in a measure while quarter notes gets the beat.
Because scales are either major or minor in Western music, and because staff notation is inherently in the key of C major, then each scale has a given number of “accidentals” called “naturals“, “sharps” (i.e. #) or “flats” (i.e. b). Therefore, in order to signify which key a composition is in, the writer must use a key signature. In particular, in staff notation a clef sign is followed by a given number of sharps or flats relative to a given key (Kamien 45). In terms of accidentals, a sharp is a signal to raise pitch, while a flat is a signal to lower pitch.
A composition may start in one key and modulate to another; modulation is a change of key. In that case, a new key signature is written to make it easier to identify key and read staff notation. The farther we modulate from the key of C major, the more complicated it is to write the traditional key signatures and scales – in other words, the more sharps and flats we must adjoin to tones. As we project upwards in fifths (or project downwards in fourths) from the key of C major, we add sharps to staff notation: the key of C major has no sharps, the key of G major has one sharp, the key of D major has two sharps, etc… Likewise, as we project upwards in fourths (or downwards in fifths) from the key of C major, we add flats to staff notation: the key of C major has no flats, the key of F major has one flat, the key of Bb major has two flats, etc…
In the staff notation below all fifteen key signatures are written. In order to modulate through all fifteen keys, and to write all their respective key signatures so that scales need no accidentals, we should begin with the major or minor scale in the key of C sharp (C#) and project upwards in fourths, (or downwards in fifths), fourteen times. This is demonstrated below with major keys.
3. Bibliography
Bloom, B. S.; Engelhart, M. D.; Furst, E. J.; Hill, W. H.; Krathwohl, D. R. Taxonomy Of Educational Objectives: The Classification Of Educational Goals. Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Company, 1956
Kamien, Roger. Music: An Appreciation. New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2018