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Looks Like it
Sounds--
or, those bizarre squiggles we call music.
(part two)
Why do we
write music the way we do and is it actually the
best method? Dare we ask?
part one
part three
I said
the last time that
clef signs were going to make things more
complicated. When Guido invented his system, the
little round block on the bottom line of the staff
always stood for the same note. It didn't matter if it
was a Tuesday, or the moon was full, or if you were
standing in Australia. Differing perspectives, or
reference points, didn't affect the material. If you'd
tried to even hint that it might, Guido would've thought
you were nuts.
If, for instance, you have learned
always to acquaint the round blob on the second line
from the bottom with the note G, it is going to be a
little disturbing when I point out to you that the same
blob, in the same location, could just as well be
several others. Similarly, if you were taught in your
very first music lesson that a quarter note is equal to
one beat, there will eventually come a day when you will
find out that that is not always true. We usually teach
beginners a few inalterable "facts" and then later, when
we think they can handle some conflicting information,
pile on the exceptions, and the differently oriented
systems. This nicely recapitulates the human race's once
cherished opinion that the earth was flat and the
unmoving center of the universe until the day we found
out that it was spherical and moving. At which point we
promptly assumed the sun to be the stationary center,
until it too got fidgety and started to dance around.
Doesn't anything hold still anymore?
Our journey through the ever expanding
series of lines in the last installment shows a bit of a
keyboard-bias on the part of the author, since many
instruments don't need to have staves joined together to
allow their full range to be written down, and it was
not meant to be a historical survey either because,
actually, the system of clefs we are about to explore
came earlier.
Bach, for example, almost never uses
ledger lines. Instead, he has a whole range of options
ranging from the employment of different clef signs.
A clef sign is a reference. It is
written at the beginning of a staff, and its often
florid design points at a particular spot on the staff,
which always stands for a particular note. From there,
the rest of the notes can be determined by how they
relate to the note that has been "fixed." Today, the
most common two clef signs are the "treble", or "G"
clef, and the "bass", or "F" clef. The G clef is
probably the most attractive looking clef, and is
written so that it encircles the second line from the
bottom of the five-line staff, which is henceforth to be
known as a "G". It is a particular G, the one commonly
known as G above middle C, and sounds like
this. You just have to know that. The
rest can be determined by working from the G.
The F clef (or bass clef) works the
same way, only the two dots which follow this relatively
pedestrian looking shape are above and below the second
line from the top, marking that line as an F below middle C.
At one time, most musicians had to know
lots of other clefs. What most of those have in common
is that the squiggly line points to wherever middle C
happens to be on the staff. The reason having all of
these clefs is useful is that, if you have a soprano who
can sing a lot of high notes, and, say, few below middle
C, you will want your staff to make available to you
notes which are mainly above middle C. A tenor, on the
other hand, has a lower voice range, and, if you move
your reference point up, you allow room for lower notes
to be written. In other words, the higher the clef
appears on the staff, the lower is the range of notes,
which is how this chart makes sense:
The reason for all of this
monkey-business is so that you don't have to use ledger
lines (additional lines drawn above or below the staff
when needed to hold notes that don't fit in the staff's
range), which, at one time, would have involved more
work for your quill pen, or more expensive stamps for
your printing press. Nowadays nobody thinks ledger lines
are a problem, and this allows us to mostly focus on two
clefs, the treble and bass. The practical effect of this
is that reading music is much simpler, since there are
only two different clefs to worry about. Those alternate
clefs have not completely gone away, however, which is
why they still teach them to students in music
conservatories.
If you are a violist, for example, you
have to use one of these:
The reason being, I suppose, that the
poor viola has a range about equally above and below
middle C, and so whichever clef (treble or bass) you
chose to use, you would end up writing a ridiculous
number of extra, or ledger lines outside the staff. At
one time ledger lines simply weren't done; now, despite
their relative popularity, it is still a good idea to
have at least half of your notes actually on the staff
itself.
Outside of the viola, the bassoonist
needs to be familiar with this clef, to accommodate her
range:
One thing that is interesting about the
move from many clefs to only two is that it shows that
musical notation does not always get more and more
complicated throughout history. The practical effect of
all these clefs disappearing from common use is that
there are fewer competing systems to learn. This is not
so different from the way that most of the modes disappeared from
music around the 16th century. Instead of about 7
different modes and their variants, and theorists
begetting elaborate theories on how to use them, music
began to consist only of major and minor. E major, A
major, B-flat Major, all represent the same pattern of
notes in relation to one another, and share the same
guidelines about how to use those notes effectively. A
piece may be pitched higher or lower, but once it
starts, most listeners won't notice a radical
difference. Thus music has become simpler for the
listener. As of the 20th century, and on into the 21st,
however, those modes are back, along with a lot of other
diverse things. We live in a comparatively complex age.
In music and everything else.
strange clefs
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In addition to the
c-clefs above, there are several more interesting
clefs. Putting an 8 on the top or bottom of a
clef, like the treble clef in our first two
examples above means that every note that follows
will be played either an octave lower, or higher,
than it is written. The next two items are
actually for unpitched instruments like drums, and
do not point to any pitches at all, since there
aren't any. Different lines may be used for
different drums, however. |
The final item
should be familiar to any theory professor because it
appears to be an improperly placed bass clef, which is
a favorite of freshmen who don't know how to draw one
properly. It is in fact an alternative "baritone
clef." I had to look that one up myself. When I did, I
discovered several other rarely used clefs. There is a
table of them at
Dolmetsch theory online.
I don't agree, however, with the statement at the
bottom of the page that every one of the 19 clefs
shown is among those "most often used today."
I've got a doctorate in music and I didn't recognize a
few of them. If you understand how clefs work,
however, none of them is without a certain logic. The
"G-clef" family always points the way to G; the
"f-clef" family does the same for F; and the "C-clef"
family always shows you where to find C.
Most of us do not need to know these
alternate clefs. If you are only used to reading in one
or two, you may not even have considered how clefs as a
group function. A few people still concern themselves
with these evolutionary discards, however. Conductors
still need to know many of them. Composers writing for
certain instruments, as well as the ones playing those
quirky noisemakers. Organists who use older editions in
which the music has not been reformatted into modern
notation. But for the rest, life is pretty simple.
Not simple enough, though, if you are
just learning your way around. How come a note on the
bottom line is a G in bass clef and an E in treble clef?
Couldn't there be a universal clef?
I pose this question because I inhabit
the same body as the strange child who once thought up
a scheme for converting us all to "metric time."
The metric system was big in the 80s; everyone was going
to convert to it by the year 2000 (remember?). Since one
of its charms was getting rid of all those messy numbers
(5,280 feet in a mile? I mean, come on. How about a nice
round 1000 meters in a kilometer, whose name even means
1,000 meters, for Pete's sake.) I planned each day
around divisions of 10, with, I think, 100 minutes in
each of them. Weeks themselves could also have 10 days
in them (although that does seem a bit exhausting,
however long your weekend), But the earth herself didn't
seem interested in helping my effort, since I couldn't
get around the fact that while doing one orbit of the
sun it spins around in an unfortunately complex number
somewhere in the vicinity of 365. Anyhow, don't blame me
if you secretly long for only 10 hours in a day. I'm
sure my proposal would have been shot down by the people
who don't think they can get enough done with 12.
As it happens, the two staves that we
join together to create a grand staff, suitable for
piano playing, are really one continuous staff (see
part one for more
detail). But, there are seven different notes before the
series begins again, and a system of alternating lines
and spaces is going to need an even number if you want
the next octave to appear the same way it did the first
time. As it is, that bottom-line G makes its next
appearance in a space, like so:
The best I can do for you under
the present circumstances is to make each staff
consist of 7 lines rather than 5. That way, almost two
octaves worth of notes can appear on a staff, with
room for exactly one note between them, and then the
bottom line on the next staff winds up a G again.
Genius!
I suppose you are going to
complain that this is a bit hard to read.
Or...and I shudder at my brilliance,
let's cut one of the old five lines. Now we are back to
the original four lines as brother Guido knew them.
Maybe it was a mistake to ever add that fifth line in
the first place. Start with an A, while we are at it.
There is space for exactly one octave. No notes can or
should be written in between them. The top line of the
first staff is a G, and the very next note, courtesy of
the elimination of that no-mans'-land in between (in
other words, no ledger lines), is positioned on the
bottom line of the next staff. And the next note
is....do I hear an A?
Lather, rinse, repeat...it never
changes!
Let's face reality. It ain't gonna
happen. Custom has taken over. And besides, as we'll
find out in a couple of installments, there happens to
be some really useful flexibility about all this chaos.
Sometimes a systemic weakness later turns out to be a
strength.
on to part three: rhythm
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