Back to: Jss1 Cultural and Creative Art (C.C.A)

Rudiments Of Music

The fundamentals of music theory, such as musical notes and sound, rhythm, timing and duration of notes, accidentals, chord structure, interval relationships between notes, and dynamics, are crucial to a basic understanding of music and valuable in practical sight-reading of musical notation on the staff.

Musical Alphabets

The notes of a musical scale are denoted by the first seven letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, RG, and then return to A, which is the eighth note or octave. A to B is a tone, B to C is a semitone, C to D is a tone, D to E is a tone, E to F is a semitone, G to A is a tone, and so on. The distance between the third and fourth notes of any major scale is a semitone. A semitone also separates the seventh from the eighth note.

Meaning OF STAVE

The five horizontal lines and four spaces that make up a stave are used to write musical notes.

Black keys on a piano are referred to as enharmonic keys, whereas white keys are known as natural keys.

Enharmonic keys are those that are black.

Meaning OF CLEF

The clef is a mark or icon used to place certain letter names on the stave (staff).

Among the numerous forms of clef, there are two that are often used in music, namely:

• Treble or G  Clef
• BASS or F CLEF 

Line G is where the treble clef appears, while line F is where the bass clef appears. There are certain letter names for quick recall on the treble staff and bass staff’s lines and spaces.

Great Staff

The treble, bass, and brace are combined to form the great stave or staff. On the keyboard screen, it is the thick line or marks that joins the treble and bass together. There are 10 spaces between each of the eleven horizontal lines.

The Values Of Musical Notes

Each musical note has a certain value that corresponds to its symbol or sign.

The musical notes and their corresponding values are shown in the table below.

Musical Notes Relative Values

1. SEMIBREVE 1(One whole note)

1. MINIM ½ of a semibreve

2. CROTCHET ¼ of a semibreve

3. QUAVER 1/8 of a semibreve

4. SEMI- QUAVER 1/16 of a semibreve

DEMI-SEMI QUAVER 1/32 of a semibreve

HEMI-DEMI-SEMI-QUAVER