II: The Staff

A: Measures and the Staff

The staff is what all music is put on. It consists of five horizontal lines. The staff is split up into sections called measures. The vertical lines that separate measures are called measure bars. Here's a staff split up into three measures:

That's nothing so far, but oh well. Now, notes are put on this staff, and depending on which note or space of the staff the note is put on, is the pitch of the note.

Each different pitch has a letter name. The different letter names go from A-G, A being the lowest, and then they start all over. So the order of note pitches goes A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, etc. Each line and space on the staff represents a pitch. Which line represents which pitch depends on what clef the staff has. Here are the two basic kinds of clefs:

Take about a day to memorize these. There are ways to remember them, such as from down to up, on the treble clef, the spaces are "egbdf", or "Every Good Boy Does Fine". The spaces, from down to up, spell FACE. With the bass clef, from down to up, the spaces spell out "Great Big Dogs Frighten Animals", and the spaces spell "All Cows Eat Grass." There are thousands of ways to remember them, you can make up your own. On the staff, the higher up you go, the higher the pitch.

What if you want a note that's not within reach of the clef? What if you want to reach an A pitch that's higher than the treble clef? Then you put a leger line. A leger line is a short line that acts as a sort of extension for the staff. Here's a picture of a few staffs with leger lines.

Can you tell what notes these are? Let's take a look at the first note. Okay, the first line on the bottom is an E, and since that note is two pitches below the E, it must be a C. (The space between the leger line and the "E" counts as a note, too. That space is a D.) In order, those notes are: C, B, C, G, A, and G.

The first note on that picture is a special C. It's not like the other C's, it's a special note known as "Middle C." On the Bass clef, the middle C is one leger line above the staff. (I'd draw a picture of it, but don't you think we've got too much pictures already?)

B: Accidentals

Okay, take a deep breath and let's move on. There are some pitches in between those pitches, like one in between C and D, etc. To get to those, you either sharp or flat a note. Making a note sharp moves it up, and making it flat moves it down. A sharp looks like a number sign ( # ) and a flat looks like a lower-case letter b. Just write those symbols before the note. So A# (A sharp) is the note in between A and B. It can also be called Bb(B flat). A note that has been sharped or flatted (or is that "sharpened" and "flattened"? I have no idea.) is called an Accidental.

So, that in mind, here's the notes, in order from lowest to highest:

A  A#/Bb  B  C  C#/Db  D  D#/Eb  E  F  F#/Gb  G  G#/Ab  A

As you can see, some pairs of notes don't have a sharp or flat note in between them. So then what happens when you sharp or flat those notes? Nothing different happens, it still moves up. So if you wrote down the note B#, it would be the same as writing down C. If you wrote the note Fb, it would be the same as writing E.

On a piano, each key represents a note. The C closest to the center of the piano is the middle C. To tell which key is which on the piano, look at the black keys. The black keys are the sharps and flats. The pattern of black keys and no black keys goes, black key, black key, no black key, black key, black key, black key, no black key, and starts all over. So look at the piano, and you'll see the pattern: two black keys, no black key, and then three black keys. The white key to the right of the two black keys is a C. So here's a piano with the notes written on it:

Calm down, you're not going color-blind, I made the white keys red on purpose, so that the green text would show better.

Whenever you make a note sharp or flat, all of that same note stays sharp or flat until the end of the measure. So if you make an A flat, and then you write that note again in the same measure, that second A would also be flat. But if you write it again in another measure, it won't be flat, you have to make it flat again.

If you don't want a note to be affected by a note before it, then use the natural sign, which looks like a L and an upside down L put together. Here's some music with sharps, flats, and naturals:

And that sign to the left of the third note is a natural sign. So in order, these notes are: E, Eb, E, D#, E, B, D, C, A. (Try to play it--it's the first few notes of Beethoven's "Fur Elise!")

Yaay! Only one more thing to go, then we're done with this section! And that one thing is....time signatures. (Shudder)

Actually, time signatures aren't that hard. It is just two numbers at the beginning of each song that shows how much beats are allowed in each measure. You've probably seen them, it's one number on top of the other. Here's a time signature:

The top number shows how much beats are allowed in each measure. So in this case, only four beats total are allowed in each measure. The bottom number, is what kind of note receives a beat, or you could say it's how much beats the whole note gets. It's usually at four. If you change it, all values change. For example, if the bottom number is changed to 8, then all values are multiplied by two: The whole note is worth eight beats, the quarter note is worth two beats, the half rest is worth four beats, et cetera. I suggest that you start off writing only fours in the bottom number, as you get better at music, you can try experimenting with different values. (By the way, the time signature 4/4 is the most commonly used one, it's also called "common time.")

And that's it! To make sure you've got it, here's a short piece of music. Get to a piano and try to play this song, it should sound familiar.

See the notes that have one on top of the other? That means for that beat, you play both of those notes at the same time. Two or notes played at the same time like that is called a chord.

Great! Now that you know how to write basic music, you can start writing your own. Buy a program like Musictime, or some other program that uses the standard music notation system. Usually those programs will let you put notes on predrawn staffs and then play back the music for you. Most also let you change the music into a midi file, so that you can then use them in your game.

In part II, I'll talk about how to expand your musical creativity-how to come up with your own songs. Any questions, suggestions for future articles, or comments, email me at Pitech@hawaii.rr.com.

John Licato is a game music composer and the CEO of Pitech Games. His personal email is Pitech@hawaii.rr.com.