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In Western musical notation, a key signature is a set of sharp, flat, or rarely, natural symbols placed on the staff at the beginning of a section of music. The initial key signature in a piece is placed immediately after the clef at the beginning of the first line. If the piece contains a section in a different key, the new key signature is placed at the beginning of that section.
Musical notation is any system used to visually represent music. Systems of notation generally represent the elements of a piece of music that are considered important for its performance in the context of a given musical tradition. The process of interpreting musical notation is often referred to as reading music.
The major scale is one of the most commonly used musical scales, especially in Western music. It is one of the diatonic scales. Like many musical scales, it is made up of seven notes: the eighth duplicates the first at double its frequency so that it is called a higher octave of the same note.
In music, notes are distinct and isolatable sounds that act as the most basic building blocks for nearly all of music. This discretization facilitates performance, comprehension, and analysis. Notes may be visually communicated by writing them in musical notation.
In musical notation, an accidental is a symbol that indicates an alteration of a given pitch. The most common accidentals are the flat and the sharp, which represent alterations of a semitone, and the natural, which cancels a sharp or flat. Accidentals alter the pitch of individual scale tones in a given key signature; the sharps or flats in the key signature itself are not considered accidentals.
C or Do is the first note of the C major scale, the third note of the A minor scale, and the fourth note of the Guidonian hand, commonly pitched around 261.63 Hz. The actual frequency has depended on historical pitch standards, and for transposing instruments a distinction is made between written and sounding or concert pitch. It has enharmonic equivalents of B♯ and D.
In music, two written notes have enharmonic equivalence if they produce the same pitch but are notated differently. Similarly, written intervals, chords, or key signatures are considered enharmonic if they represent identical pitches that are notated differently. The term derives from Latin enharmonicus, in turn from Late Latin enarmonius, from Ancient Greek ἐναρμόνιος, from ἐν ('in') and ἁρμονία ('harmony').
In music, solfège or solfeggio, also called sol-fa, solfa, solfeo, among many names, is a mnemonic used in teaching aural skills, pitch and sight-reading of Western music. Solfège is a form of solmization, though the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
In music, sharp – eqv. dièse or diesis – means higher in pitch. The sharp symbol, ♯, indicates that the note to which the symbol is applied is played one semitone higher. The opposite of sharp is flat, indicating a lowering of pitch. The ♯ symbol derives from a square form of the letter b.
In music, flat means lower in pitch. It may either be used generically, meaning any lowering of pitch, or refer to a particular size: lowering pitch by a chromatic semitone. A flat is the opposite of a sharp which raises pitch by the same amount that a flat lowers it.
In music, letter notation is a system of representing a set of pitches, for example, the notes of a scale, by letters. For the complete Western diatonic scale, for example, these would be the letters A-G, possibly with a trailing symbol to indicate a half-step raise or a half-step lowering. This is the most common way of specifying a note in speech or in written text in English or German. In Germany, Scandinavia, and parts of Central and Eastern Europe, H is used instead of B, and B is used instead of B♭. In traditional Irish music, where almost all tunes are restricted to two octaves, notes in the lower octave are written in lower case while those in the upper octave are written in upper case.
In Classical music theory, a Neapolitan chord is a major chord built on the lowered (flattened) second (supertonic) scale degree. In Schenkerian analysis, it is known as a Phrygian II, since in minor scales the chord is built on the notes of the corresponding Phrygian mode.
B, also known as Si, Ti, or, in some European countries, H, is the seventh note and the twelfth semitone of the fixed-Do solfège. Its enharmonic equivalents are C♭ (C-flat) and A.
D-sharp minor is a minor scale based on D♯, consisting of the pitches D♯, E♯, F♯, G♯, A♯, B, and C♯. Its key signature has six sharps.
Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are used to characterize scales. The terms are also applied to musical instruments, intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. They are very often used as a pair, especially when applied to contrasting features of the common practice music of the period 1600–1900.
E is the third note and the fifth semitone of the C major scale, and mi in fixed-do solfège. It has enharmonic equivalents of F♭ [(F-flat) which is by definition a diatonic semitone above E♭] and D, amongst others.
F is a musical note, the fourth above C or fifth below C. It is the fourth note and the sixth semitone of the solfège. It is also known as fa in fixed-do solfège. It is enharmonic equivalent with E♯ (E-sharp) and G, amongst others.
In modern Western music notation, a natural (♮) is a musical symbol that cancels a previous sharp or flat on a note in the written music. The sharp or flat may be from a key signature or an accidental. The natural indicates that the note is at its unaltered pitch.
A musical cryptogram is a cryptogrammatic sequence of musical symbols which can be taken to refer to an extra-musical text by some 'logical' relationship, usually between note names and letters. The most common and best known examples result from composers using musically translated versions of their own or their friends' names as themes or motifs in their compositions. These are not really rigorous cipher algorithms in the formal sense, but more like musical monograms. The methods used historically by composers were either too incomplete or too simplistic to meaningfully encrypt long text messages. There is a separate history of music ciphers utilizing music notation to encode messages for reasons of espionage or personal security that involved encryption and/or steganography.
Johann Sebastian Bach's Clavier-Übung II was published in 1735, containing two works written for performance on a two-manual harpsichord. In the publication, Bach contrasted a work in Italian style – a Concerto nach Italienischem Gusto, BWV 971, with a work in French style, a suite which he called Ouvertüre nach franzosischer Art, BWV 831.
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- ↑ The French words majeur and mineur are also used