Basic Music Theory: How to Read, Write, and Understand Written Music

Basic Music Theory 33

Staff 4.3 Line and space notes combined, low to high (there are notes both higher and lower than those shown here).

The High and the Lowly

Pitch is not only something you find in a tree and at a baseball game. As it relates to sound,

Webster’s definition of pitch is: the property of a sound and especially a musical tone that is

determined by the frequency of the waves producing it. Don’t you sometimes just hate dictionaries?

What pitch means in music is the highness or lowness of a sound or note.

If the pitch of one note is higher than another, it will be written higher up on the staff. And if one

note’s pitch is lower than another’s, it will be written lower down on the staff.

Staff 4.4 Examples of low and high.

Moving On

Okay. You should now have a good handle on line and space notes and how pitch is shown in

written music. Is it all clear? Be sure you’ve got it before you move on.

Coming up in Chapter 5 you’ll learn the musical alphabet and how these letter names are applied to

the lines and spaces and leger lines of the staff.

Chapter 4 Study Guide

This note is higher than .................... this one. This note is lower than ................. this one.

1. What is a line note?


2. What is a space note?


3. What does pitch mean in music?


4. If one note’s pitch is higher than another, it will be
   written _____ on the staff.
   
   
   1. Any note with a line
      through it
   
   
   
   


5. Any note lying in a
   space


6. The highness or low-
   ness of a note


7. Higher