What Every Music Lovers Needs to Know

Alphabet

The music alphabet is like the English alphabet. It is a system of letters that are assigned to represent sounds in music that we call notes.

Try It Yourself!

Practice using this alphabet with game1.

Note Values Alphabet

note - a pitch produced by a musical instrument. (Also a mark written on a page to represent such a pitch.)

octave - a range of notes from one letter name up to the next highest (or down to the next lowest) pitches by the same letter name.

natural notes - notes represented by the seven letters of the music alphabet with no sharp or flat symbols.

sharp notes - notes represented by any letter of the music alphabet with the sharp symbol (♯) added.

flat notes - notes represented by any letter of the music alphabet with the flat symbol (♭) added.

enharmonics - two notes with the same pitch, only called by a different name. (A♭ and G♯)

Dynamics

Name	Letters	Level
fortississimo	*fff*	very very loud
fortissimo	ff	louder
forte	f	loud
mezzo-forte	mf	average
mezzo-piano	mp	average
piano	p	soft
pianissimo	pp	softer
pianississimo	*ppp*	very very soft

Dynamics are one of the expressive elements of music. Used effectively, dynamics help musicians sustain variety and interest in a musical performance, and communicate a particular emotional state or feeling.

Example: stringendo means music to be performed with increasing speed.

Key Signatures

	Key signatures are an invaluable piece of information in music. They denote which pitches will be used for a song.

Clef

A clef is a musical symbol used to indicate the pitch of written notes.Placed on a stave, it indicates the name and pitch of the notes on one of the lines.

Time signature

The time signature is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are to be contained in each measure (bar) and which note value is equivalent to one beat.

There are various types of time signatures, depending on whether the music follows simple rhythms or involves unusual shifting tempos, including: simple, compound, complex, mixed,additive, fractional and irrational meters.