Li Jie and Yuu’s introductory lecture on composition (how to read music scores 3-4)

Yu: Today we still learn how to read staff. This time I will talk about topics related to bars and beats.

Li Jie: Then please! I can understand the bars more or less, but the understanding of the beats seems a bit subtle, so I will study hard.

Yuu: If you combine several beats together, it will form what is called a bar. Furthermore, we often treat bars that are multiples of 4 as a whole, such as 4 bars, 8 bars, and 16 bars. The duration of the notes that can fit in a measure is fixed.

Reasoning: Huh?

Yuu: It’s really hard for people to understand if I describe it in words. So, we can often see symbols like the following in music scores, right?

Conclusion: I remember seeing it often in music textbooks.

Yuu: The so-called beat is the connection between beats before and after. In fact, the numbers arranged up and down in the picture above indicate the beat of the measure. For example, in the picture above, it means "4/4 shot". The pronunciation is "the number above/the number below" + "shoot". This way you can figure out the beat of a bar.

Conclusion: Ah, I always feel like I have heard of the term "4/4 beat". However, four-quarters is 1. What does this mean? I don’t understand.

Yuu: This is not the same concept as the usual score. It represents the type and number of notes in each measure.

In other words, if it is "4/4 time", then one measure is quarter note x 4.

Conclusion: So that’s what it means - that is to say, there is no difference whether it is 2/2 beat, 1/1 beat or 8/8 beat.

Yu: From the perspective of reading music, there is no difference. But in this case, 99.9% of the time it is written as "4/4 time". Also, occasionally you can see "6/8 beat" written as "2/4 beat". (Annotation: From the perspective of strong and weak beats, there is a problem here. The strong and weak beats of 6/8 are "strong, weak, weak, strong, weak, weak", which are compound beats and generally appear in polka or waltz music; 2/4 The strength of the beat is "strong or weak", which is generally used in marches; but for beginners, you can ignore this problem for the time being)

Conclusion: In this way, everything feels like even numbers Okay, is there such a rule that it must be an even number?

Yuu: The number above does not have to be an even number. However, since the numbers below are used to represent note types, they are all even numbers in principle. Rather than saying that they are all even numbers in principle, it is better to say that the types of notes are all even numbers such as half notes, quarter notes, and eighth notes.

Yuu: It’s quite interesting to have songs with unusual time signatures such as 17/16 and 7/8. Also, if the beat changes frequently in a piece of music, it is called a change of beat. There is a style called "progressive rock", which is based on changing time signatures. Changing the beat in ordinary music will cause a serious sense of dissonance, and it is precisely because of this that changing the beat is particularly interesting. It is possible to change the time signature and measures during composition, so please keep this in mind.

Conclusion: Speaking of which, it seems that in music we often use 4 as the benchmark.

Yuu: That’s true. The notes are based on quarter notes, the beats are also based on 4/4, and the bars are also 4 bars and 4 bars considered as a whole. This situation is particularly common.

Conclusion: Is this because it looks balanced?

Yuu: There is also this reason. If you think about it carefully, not only in music, but also in literature, if an article has this form of "starting, turning, and combining", it will look very good. "In the history of human reproduction and development, it feels appropriate to divide things by '4'." This may have been deeply engraved in our genes.

Conclusion: I always think this sounds very meaningful at first glance (laughs). All in all, when composing music, you should be aware of dividing it into 4 bars, right?

Yuu: Today I will talk about topics related to pitch.

Conclusion: I feel that pitch is a complicated thing. I still can't figure out which sound "do" on the staff is.

Yuu: That’s not the case. It just depends on whether you are familiar with it or not. So, anyway, let’s first confirm which place on the chart corresponds to which note.

Yuu: Anyway, let’s just remember the pitch position of “do”. Taking "do" as the basis to go up is "do re mi fa sol la shi", and going down is "do shi ra sol fa mi re do".

Yuu: We regard the period from "do" to the next "do" as a whole, which is called "octave". One such whole is called "1 octave", and two such wholes are called "2 octaves". Even if it is in different octaves, as long as it is the same "do", its sound effect will be the same.

Yuu: The sounds mentioned above are all natural sounds without "sharps" (?) or "flats" (?). The so-called natural sound is the "sound produced by the white keys" on the piano keyboard.

Yuu: The so-called sharp sign means raising the natural sound by a semitone. In contrast, a flat sign means that the note is lowered by a semitone. If we want to talk about the concept of "semitone", then let's take a look at the sound "sol".

You: sol sharp or la flat is the sound represented by the black key adjacent to the right side of the white key sol. Its pitch is right between "sol" and "la". In contrast, sol flat or fa sharp is the pitch corresponding to the black key adjacent to the left of the white key "sol". It is also the pitch halfway between "sol" and "fa".

Yuu: In fact, there are rising and falling notes of the same pitch as natural sounds. This is the rising sound of "mi" and "fa" and the falling sound of "fa" and "do". It is easy to understand when we look at the piano keyboard. There are no black keys between mi and fa and between shi and do.

Yuu: Because of this, even if it is offset by a semitone, it still belongs to the white key part. If we actually try to play "do re mi fa sol la shi do" on an instrument, we will find that the intervals between mi and fa, and shi and do are only a semitone higher than other sounds. That’s all, just remember it as a little knowledge.

Yuu: In music classes at school, have you ever seen symbols similar to the ones below?

Conclusion: Ah, I’ve seen it before! I remember it was called treble clef and bass clef!

Yuu: This number represents the reference position of the sound. For example, the do sound, which is the pitch reference, is positioned on the treble spectrum as the bottom of the staff plus a line; while its position on the bass spectrum is as the top of the staff plus one line.

Conclusion: They are all the same pitch, right? Why are there two different ways of writing it?

Yuu: As for this, let me give you an example. For example, when we were writing Bass Pad, the range of the bass was much wider than that of the piano, guitar or human voice. In this way, the notes have to be written very low, which looks very troublesome, so in order to make it easier to see the bass, we used the bass clef. When memorizing the pitches of the staff, it will be very convenient to memorize the pitches of the bass staff as well.

Yuu: We occasionally see notes like "8va" or "8vb" on them. Like the treble clef and bass clef, this one is also designed to make it easier to read music charts. 8va is sometimes equivalent to "octave".

Yuu: By the way, if we use bass notation to record the bass sound, and the sound is too low to read the notation, even if "8vb" is not written, we will treat it as if "8vb" is written. .

Conclusion: My brain is about to explode...

Yuu: In the beginning, it is all about memorizing things, so I will feel irritable. But anyway, try looking for those notes on the staff while reading the textbook or this lecture. When you become more proficient, you can often tell the pitch at a glance, and then you will find it much easier than tab notation.

Conclusion: Yes, yes... I will try my best——