Page 46 - Music

Chapter Staff notation
Three

Introduction
Music is like any language used for communication. It can be written and
read in various forms. In this chapter, you will learn musical pitches, the

distances between them and how they can form major scales. Also, you will
learn staff notation as a common form of writing and reading music. The
competencies developed will enable you to construct major scales, and read
and write music in staff notation.

Think

How musicians know which notes to play or sing just by reading on a score

Concept of pitch

Before learning staff notation, it is important to understand the concept of pitch.
Pitch is the degree of highness or lowness of a sound. In music, pitches are named
by using the seven alphabetical letters, which are A, B, C, D, E, F and G. On a piano
keyboard, these letter names are assigned to the white keys as shown in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1: Pitch names on a piano keyboard

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