Music Theory: Basics of Pitch and Notation
Musical notation is a set of symbols that we use to communicate the sounds we want a player to create on their instrument. It can be seen as the language of music and is core to understanding most topics in music theory. We will start this article by seeing how notes are arranged on the piano. After this, we can naturally extend our understanding of the piano to theory, as well as any other instrument we might want to consider.
The Layout of the Piano
The piano consists of a set of (often 88) keys, each tuned to a specific note. In music, we represent each note as a letter in the alphabet, using the letters A,B,C,D,E,F and G. The image below shows how a typical piano is laid out.
There are a few important details to take away from this picture. The first is that when we reach G in our musical alphabet, the letters start again at A. The second is looking at how the keys are arranged. C is always at the start of the groups of two black keys. F is always at the start of three black keys. From either of these two reference points, we can continue…
