Coursera: Fundamentals Of Music Theory

Basic of music theory, following the coursera course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/edinburgh-music-theory

24 flashcards · Music · by lakesare

1. What's a stave or a staff?

   A set of five parallel lines and the spaces between them, on which notes are written to indicate their pitch.

2. What's a ledger line?

   A short line added for notes above or below the range of a staff.

3. What's a clef?

   A clef is a musical symbol used to indicate the pitch of written notes. From French clef "key" There are three forms of clef used in modern music notation: F, C, and G. Each form assigns its reference note to a line (and in rare cases, a space) depending on its placement on the stave.

4. This is a D. Find D one octave above.

   Count the D as 1, then count every line and space up to 8 (on the line near the top). This will be another D:

5. How many notes are there between two octaves?

   There are 7 notes, and another A will come the 8th.

6. What's the mnemonic to memorize note names?

7. Where is note A on the piano?

8. Semitone vs tone?

   Semitone is the distance between adjacent keys. E.g. black and white, or E and FTone is the distance between the keys separated by another key.

9. What's interval?

   An interval is the distance in pitch between two notes. Intervals are given a number name and a quality name. For example: c to d is a second and c to e is a third.

10. Interval name consists of [quality name] [number name]. What are these? E.g. perfect unison

    Quality name - number of half-tones which the distance includes. Five interval qualities are possible: perfect, major, minor, diminished, and augmented.Number name - number of tones which the distance includes. For example: c to d is a second and c to e is a third. An interval of the number one or first is called a unison and an interval of the eighth is called an octave.

11. Which of these intervals is a fourth?

    Option 3 shows C then F. Count C, D, E, F = 4. As you can probably tell, we are also using these questions as an aid to practice reading notes.

12. Which option shows an interval that is a minor second, or semitone?

    Option 2 show the notes B to C, which as we just saw on the piano, have no black note between them- so this is a minor second. All the other intervals shown are major seconds.

13. Which of these intervals is a sixth?

    Option 2. Option 1) is a second, 2) is E, F,G, A, B, C = 6, 3 is a fifth, and 4 is a seventh.

14. What's a scale in music theory?

    Scale is any set of musical notes ordered by pitch. The C major scale, ascending and descending The A minor melodic minor scale, ascending and descending A scale ordered by increasing pitch is an ascending scale, and a scale ordered by decreasing pitch is a descending scale.

15. Indicate which of these is a tone or a semitone: This is a C Major scale.

16. What's a diatonic scale?

    Diatonic scale is a heptatonic scale (7 notes per octave) that includes 5 tones, and 2 semitones in each octave, where semitones are maximally separated from each other! 2 semitones are separated from each other by either 2 or 3 tones, depending on their position in the scale. Still a diatonic scale:

17. Imagine interval of a second here.

    It can be, e.g.:

18. What's a tonic?

    The first note in a scale, e.g. here C is a tonic: In the Phrygian mode, E is a tonic.Using only white notes, the Phrygian mode runs from E to E.E could be considered the "tonic" of the Phrygian scale (in the same way that C is the tonic of C major).

19. What's the black key between A and B called?

    A# (A sharp) and Bb (B flat)

20. What do these signs mean?

    # - SHARP Black keys to the right of white keys are sharps.b - FLAT Black keys to the left of white keys are flats.

21. What's the major scale formula?

    The sequence of intervals between the notes of a major scale is: W–W–H–W–W–W–H Whole == tone, half == semitone. The major scale had a central importance in Western music, particularly in the common practice period and in popular music.

22. Name 3 examples of scales. A measure of the width of each scale step provides a method to classify scales.

    Chromatic scale: H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H (12 notes per octave) In a chromatic scale each scale step represents a semitone interval,Major scale: W–W–H–W–W–W–H (7 notes per octave) Ionian mode (major)Minor scale: W-H-W-W-H-W-W (7 notes per octave) Aeolian mode (natural minor) Scales may be described as: Chromatic (12 notes per octave) Heptatonic (7 notes per octave): the most common modern Western scale. Diatonic scale Major scale Minor scale Melodic minor scale Harmonic minor scale Octatonic (8…

23. What scale is modern piano keyboard based on?

    Diatonic scale. Any sequence of seven successive white keys plays a diatonic scale. The modern musical keyboard originated as a diatonic keyboard with only white keys. The black keys were progressively added for several purposes: improving the consonances, mainly the thirds, by providing a major third on each degree; allowing all twelve transpositions described above; and helping musicians to find their bearings on the keyboard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatonic_scale#Theory

24. If there are 12 named notes within an octave, why are there only 7 letters (or do-re-mi or a-b-c syllables)?

    The additional 5 notes have compound names, such as E♭( pronounced "E-flat") and F# (pronounced "F-sharp").