The Musical Alphabet

Welcome to Lesson 1! In this lesson, we'll begin our musical journey by discussing what pitch is and how it relates to everything else in music as well as learning about the Musical Alphabet AKA, the Chromatic Scale.

Basically, everything we hear is made up of pitches. Pitches are simply vibrations of a certain frequency. We don't really need to know anything about these frequencies though. What's important is that these pitches make up the sounds we hear. Every pitch has a different color then another. Although, to the untrained ear, they may sound virtually the same. When the frequency(which is the number of times something vibrates per second) is doubled, the pitch has exactly the same color as before, BUT it will sound higher. If we halve the frequency, again, the pitch sounds like exactly the same color BUT it will sound much lower. This is what we call "Octaves"  Basically we have a pitch of say 100, (This pitch would be EXTREMELY low and inaudible to humans but for simplicity of example, it's 100)  If we make this pitch, 200, then the pitch would be one octave higher than 100, if make it 50, then the pitch is one octave lower than 100.

All of these octaves would all have the same letter names. Let's say that 100 is the note C, so that means that 200 would also be the note C an octave higher than 100 and 50 would be a C one octave LOWER than 100. They are all C's yet one is higher and one is lower. And to your ears, they would all sound like the same note but higher or lower than each other. So if we have Three octaves of C_ 50, 100 and 200, we would have an infinite number of pitches in between 50 to 100, and 100 to 200 right? Of course, only doubling and halving the frequency would give you C, that means that any notes in between these numbers would NOT be C's.  Let's say we could have some kind of F note at 145 right? or a B at 194 and so on... This means that we have octaves but we also have notes in between them.

In our music, we divide these infinite spaces up into 11 equally spaced pitches plus the octave which means we now would have eleven notes in between 50 to 100 or 100 to 200. These eleven notes plus one octaves make up what we call "The Chromatic Scale" which basically is every note in our musical system in a row. There are seven letters: A B C D E F G and then at the octave, A again but this time, an octave higher. And no, there is no H I or J. Not in our tuning anyway, why? I have no idea but they decided to stop at G. Guess they thought "Alright guys, seems like that'll be enough notes." Besides these, everyone of these letters has a sharp or flat version of it except for B and C  or E and F. The reason for this is that our 12 tone scale came from a simpler seven note scale. I will discuss this more in lesson 5.

Flat - To move a note down one in the chromatic scale, denoted with b sign
Sharp - To move a note up one in the chromatic scale, denoted with # sign.

This gives us:  A  A#/Bb   B C   C#/Db   D   D#/Eb   E F   F#/Gb   G   G#/Ab    A...

The notes that have /s between them are en-harmonic which is just a fancy term for "The same thing spelled differently" A# means to move A up one note in the chromatic scale, Bb means to move B down one note in the chromatic scale. Both result in the same note. So therefore, A# or Bb it doesn't matter what you call the note.  Just think of it as there can only be ONE note in between a regular letter such as A. So, deductively, you can figure out that A# which is one up from A and Bb which is one down from B is the same note.

The trick is to remember which notes do and DON'T have sharps/flats between them because knowing how the twelve notes relate to each other is how we begin to visualize musical space. These letters make up what's called "The Musical Alphabet" which is the like the color pallet we have as musicians. However, as I said before, there are an INFINITE number of possible pitches in between an octave which technically means, these eleven notes are by no means the only notes possible. But they are the standard in which we use to write music and generally,  in western music, notes outside of these pitches don't exist. There are a few exceptions though such as Blue notes and bends, which we'll learn about MUCH later.  Basically, every note on you're instrument (Unless you have an instrument like a violin or cello) is one of the notes of the Chromatic Scale.

Assignments
                 Memorize the Musical Alphabet and also be aware of E-F or B-C having no sharp between them. Also remember what an octave is, and it would really be a good idea to listen and learn how to play them on your instrument.   I would also remember what a # and b is and what they mean because I will be referencing them and the chromatic scale through out this course.

Terms:
            Sharp -  Raising a note by one step in the chromatic scale
            Flat - Lowering a note by one step in the chromatic scale
            Musical Alphabet - All the notes we have. AKA, The chromatic scale
            Octave - Two versions of the same note, one higher and one lower. Also, the distance from two of the same notes.
         
Good luck!  On to working with musical intervals!