CLEFS

Types of Clefs:

• French Violin
  
• Treble Clef
• Soprano
• Mezzo-Soprano
• Alto
• Tenor
• Baritone
• Bass
• Sub-Bass

Still there are different types of clefs are there, there are few clefs which are commonly used by the song writers. They are, treble, bass, alto and tenor. The notes for each clefs which gives to a stave is as shown below.

Treble Clef: 

Treble clef is also known as G-clef. In which the spiral of the G clef starts with the G above the middle C. It is most commonly used by all the musicians. Beginners used to learn this clef first. This is commonly used by violinists, pianists, guitarists. If there comes a treble clef in a sheet music, the 5 lines represents E,G,B,D and F (from bottom to top) and the space denotes F,A,C and E (from bottom to top).

Treble Clef

Bass Clef:

It is also known as F clef. That F is actually located in the octave which is just below the middle c. This clef appears most commonly in most of the modern musical pieces. This made the usage of baritone clefs nearly negligible. The 5 lines of a stave will be G,B,D,F and A (from bottom to top) , the spaces represents A,C,E and G (from bottom to top) during the presence of bass clef in the staff.

Bass Clef

Alto Clef:

Alto clef is known as C clef which was commonly used in the periods of classical musical era. This clef is used to denote in some instruments such as viola, as it represents the alto part of the particular musical piece. This is used to avoid the usage of too high and too low ledger lines. This clef adjust the notes with all the clefs. The lines in the stave represents F,A,C,E and G. The spaces denotes E,G,B and D.

Alto Clef

Tenor Clef:

This clef moreover has all the characteristics of Alto Clef except the line and space values. This is used for the instruments such as cello, bassoon and some times even double bass. The 5 lines denotes D,F,A,C and E and the spaces represents E,G,B and D.

Tenor Clef

Octave Clef:

This kind of clef is used to make the pitches to sound one or two octaves, higher or lower in the sheet music. There may come two different values in the octave clefs. They are 8 and 15. This technique is applicable in treble and bass clefs.

Octave Clef

Percussion Clef: (Neutral Clef)

These types of clefs don't have any specific note values, instead they have lines to represent different instruments in one percussion kit. This is not actually a clef as tabulature.

Neutral Clef

Tablature: 

This isn't used to implicate any pitch value in it, instead sometimes represent the strings in stringed instruments (especially for guitar). Based on the number of strings the lines will also be changed.  Here the lines are used and the spaces aren't used for any purpose.

Tablature

Note:

• Treble clefs are most commonly used clef and the values of the lines vcan be easily memorized using some phrases like "Every Good Boy Does Fine". And the spaces as FACE.
• In the case of piano, treble and bass clef will be used most commonly.
  

LINES AND OCTAVE SIGNS IN SHEET MUSIC

LINES:

There are some lines in sheet music, which helps us to understand some stuffs written in it. Many of them are commonly used in various musical pieces. The ultimate aim in learning sheet music is to read the musical notations and to play the music in a clear manner. Let us see the list of lines that can be used in a sheet music.

Stave or Staff:

These are the commonly used five lines, which are used to indicate the musical pitches. Since the musical notes are from A to G, the top most line represents the highest pitch and vice versa. These notes moves vertically upward to reach highest note. In a stave, both the lines and spaces holds values. They together used to represent the musical notes. A clef will be used in each stave to determine specific value for each line and spaces in a stave.

Staff/Stave

Ledger or Leger lines:

Apart from the five common lines in a stave, there may be some additional lines added above or below the staff. These are used to represent higher or lower notes which a stave cannot cover. There shall be up-to 5 ledger lines which can be added in a sheet music and there are some other symbols such as 8va/15va to represent the notes which are beyond those limits.

Ledger/Leger Lines

Bar Lines:

These are vertical lines, which are used to split each bars based on the time signature. When there comes any grand staff (Combining the staves of multiple instruments), these bar lines will extend to those staves as well to indicate the separation of each bars clearly.

Bar lines

Double Bar Lines:

The double bar lines are used to indicate any sudden changes in the stave. Such as change in time signature, key signature or a new musical section in the same piece.

Double Bar Lines

Bold Double Bar Lines:

In Bold double bar lines, there will be one normal vertical line and another bold bar line. It is used to represent the end of a musical piece or any composition.

Bold Double Bar Lines

Dotted Bar Lines:

This type of bar lines can be used to reduce the complexity in count and time signature, when some uncommon time signature comes. Such as 5/4, 7/4, etc.,

Dotted Bar Lines

Brackets:

These are used to combine two or more instruments to play simultaneously. Sometimes this is used to represent different parts of same instruments, such as left and right hand notation of a piano.

Bracket

Braces:

This is somewhat similar to the brackets. They are most commonly used in representing piano notation, harp notation or grand staff. Thebrace is some times called as "Accolade" in some old contexts.

Brace

These are the most commonly used sheet music lines. 

OCTAVE SIGNS:

In instruments such as grand piano, there will be 7 octaves. In such case, it is impossible to represent all the octaves in a same stave by extending the ledger lines too high and too low. At that time some kind of values are used to denote the octave values. They are,

• Ottava alta. (8va)
• Quindicesima. (15ma)

Ottava Alta:

It is denoted using the symbol 8va which is used to shift one octave upper (if placed on top of the stave) or lower (if placed on the bottom of the stave). Following image will give a clear about ottava.

Ottava

Quindicesima:

Quindicesima is used to denote the change of pitches of the range of two octaves. It is represented as 15ma.

Quindicesima

SHEET MUSIC AND ITS NOTATION

Sheet Music : 

Sheet music is a collection of musical notation which uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, chords, dynamics and various fundamentals to perform a song or instrumental music piece. The sheet music will be in either handwritten or printed form.

Sheet Music

The purpose of the sheet music is to enable the instrumental players with reading skills in reading sheet music notations, to play musical piece or song without any hindrance.

There are various notation available in the sheet music to represent different styles of playing and singing as well. Since those notations are subdivided into certain categories, as follows:

• Lines and Octave signs.
• Clefs.
• Rhythmic values of notes and rests.
• Breaks.
• Accidentals and key signatures.
• Time signatures.
• Note relationships.
• Dynamics.
• Articulation marks.
• Ornaments.
• Representation and codas.
• Instrument-specific notations.

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

Instrumental music is developed as a specific genre was developed in 16th century, gaining considerable momentum in the 17th through a variety of idiomatic pieces. Increased attention to technical fluency was accompanied by greater complexity and sophistication in the instruments themselves.

The pattern of mixing the song with musical instruments produced great taste to the entire song. As the generation of instrumental music gets developed, the music gets mixed with the technology and the efficiency of the music increased as well.

In these days the music can be composed without using any musical intruments, rather using softwares. But as the fundamental, the person need atleast some basic knowledge about the music and the software or some other stuffs they use.

Basically there are three major types of instruments. 

• Wind Instruments
• Skinned Instruments
• String Instruments

Wind instruments consists the instruments such as flute, Trumpet, Clarinet, Mouth organ, Etc.,

Skinned Instruments are none other than the percussion instruments such as Drums.

Stringed instruments are the instruments with strings. For example: Guitar, Violin, Cello and so on.

SINGING

          Singing is the expressions produced by the vocal sound with good modulation, appropriate rhythms and tunes. 

There are different singing styles and genres available in singing. Some of them are,

• R&B
• Pop
• Rock
• Jazz
• Country
• Church
• Opera
• Hip Hop
• Blues
• Classical
• Metal
• Growl
• Heavy Metal
• Soul

The singing voices also separated indifferent ways . They are,

• Bass-lowest male voice type with a vocal range of E2-E4
  
• Baritone-2nd lowest male voice type with a vocal range of A2-A4
  
• Tenor-2nd highest male voice type with a vocal range of C3-C5
• Countertenor-highest male voice type with a vocal range of E3-E5
• Contralto-lowest female voice type with a vocal range of E3-E5
• Alto-2nd lowest female voice type with a vocal range of F3-F5
• Mezzo Soprano-2nd highest female voice type with a vocal range of A3-A5
• Soprano-highest female voice type with a vocal range of C4-C6

Though there are different styles and voices  , the singing styles can be adaptable by anyone but the voices won't. The vocal range differs in each person. 

INTRODUCTION

    Music is one of the greatest arts that's being developed in each and every eras of human, beyond culture, region, language, religion and so on. It is the combination of both vocal and instrumental sounds produced . The vocal part is entirely depends on the talent and skills the singer has. The instrumental part is also not exempted from such conditions. Both parts need to be treated with equal importance. The vocal part needs the singing knowledge and the instrumental part requires the knowledge about the musical instruments that's being played by the musicians. Music is an ocean! One can swim deeper and deeper in it, if he/she has the interest over it. Anyone can learn music and develop themselves in it, since all the arts can be learned by practicing. 

    My forth coming blogs will give you a good understanding about each and every parts of the music.

                                                                       Thank You!