Music has its own language and instead of alphabetic signs it uses notes, which are part of the musical scale, also known as the diatonic scale. The notes are sounds and each sound has a name and to represent the musical notes on a scale the staff is used, which are five horizontal lines parallel to each other where all the notes and notations related to the musical piece are written. In other words, the music with its different elements is written on the staff, as well as a clef, which is a specific musical register.
There is a series of natural notes that make up the scale and they are the well-known do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si and do. These notes are presented on a scale or ladder because there are intervals, which are the sound distance or height that exists between two sounds (and the unit of measurement to use is the pitch). Thus, between the notes C and D there is a tone, from D to me there is another tone, but from me to F the distance is smaller and we are talking about a semitone. In this way, the diatonic musical scale is made up of 5 tones and two semitones.
Chromatic scale
In the diatonic scale, the levels that are presented are not the same size, since there are tones and semitones. However, if all musical levels were the same size on the musical scale, we would be talking about the chromatic scale. In this scale the natural musical notes carry a series of tones and semitones located between them. There are twelve sounds on the chromatic scale, each one semitone apart.
The knowledge of musical scales is the basic foundation for the composition of the melody in a song, for composing and playing and, at the same time, for understanding the structure of chords.
Alterations
There are some signs whose effect is to alter the height of the natural note and they are sharp and flat. The sustain applied to a note raises it half a tone and the flat applied to a note lowers it half a tone. And between each of the natural notes that are at a distance of one tone there is a free step and each of these steps can be named as half a tone higher than the previous note or as a half tone lower than the subsequent one.
In this way, we can name the first free step as C sharp or if we raise C by a semitone when applying a sharp or as D-flat if we lower half a tone from D by using a flat. In the same way, the step that follows the D can be named as D sharp if we apply a sharp to the D or as E flat if we lower a semitone from the E.
Photos: iStock - skynesher
