Len's Music Blog

  Mr. Guido   (entry for 6/28/2024) Whenever we read or write a music note on a music staff, we have Guido d’Arezzo to thank. He invented modern music notation, with all its plusses and minuses, and while many musicians and non-musicians have attempted to replace his invention with something else, all have failed, or are in the process of failing.   Now please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying he invented the  idea  of music notation. At least as early as 600BC, the Greeks had a method for writing music down. But it gave no precise measures of pitch, only relative ones, and it used words and diagrams, not notes. We can today go back and read what the musicians of that time said, but we have only the vaguest notion what they meant.   The system that Mr. Guido invented can still be read and understood today, though some aspects have evolved over time.   Nobody seems to know for sure when he was born. Some authorities say 985AD. Some say 995. He was cer...

  This Is a C-Clef (entry for 6/21/2024) If you’ve read my essays on Treble and Bass Clefs, you’ll already know that Clefs evolve from Capital Cursive versions of the note names that they define. But I can’t see it in the case of the C-Clef. To my eye it looks nothing like a Capital letter C. However, I’m assured by the experts that that is where it came from, so I have to give in and admit that the note name it defines is the note C, in this case so-called Middle C. (So-called because it supposedly is the note it the middle of a piano keyboard. It isn’t. There  is   no note in the middle of a piano keyboard! The exact middle of an 88-note standard piano keyboard is the crack between the E and the F, just above ‘Middle C.’)   The C-Clef is a very versatile clef. There are two versions of it that are used every day by classical musicians. There are also two versions that used to be used quite a bit, but are barely ever used any more. (There’s also a fifth version that...

This   Is Not a Bass Clef .   But This   Is If you have read the first post in this series, titled This is Not a Treble Clef, you will be able to guess where this one is headed, and you’ll be correct.   Just as the G-Clef evolved from a cursive letter G, this clef evolved from a cursive letter F. The two dots show where the note-name F goes. It’s the line that runs between the two dots. In the first example at the beginning of this post, the F Clef was not also a Bass Clef, because it wasn’t on a staff and therefore could not show where the note name F went. But in the second example, and in the one immediately above this paragraph, the two dots show that the note name F belongs on the fourth line (up from the bottom) and in these two cases, the clef is both an F-Clef  and  a Bass Clef. This staff is the one that the Men sang from in choirs in the middle ages, just as the Boys with Unchanged Voices sang on the staff that used the Treble Clef.   Now, ju...

 This is Not a Treble Clef! But this: Is. “What’s the difference?” I hear you say. Well, there is no difference in the clefs themselves. The difference is in Where They Are.   The first example has the clef floating around in outer space, with no reference to show where its home is. The second example has the clef grounded firmly on a five-line something-or-other called a Staff.    Both examples are called by the name G-Clef, which is a special musical shape that evolved from the cursive letter G. Its purpose is to show you where the note with the letter-name G is located. In the second example the pig’s-tail circle in the middle of the shape is curled around the second line of the staff. (That is, the next-to-bottom line. In music, everything is bottoms-up. The first line of any staff is the bottom line. And vice versa.) This shows that the note called G is on the second line. (And by ‘on,’ I mean the line runs  through  the note-head, not above or below ...