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Welcome to the first lecture.

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Before we get started, a word about pianos
and keyboards.

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We are going to use the piano quite a lot
for this music theory course.

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And we're hoping that you can get access
to any kind

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of keyboard, including one that you might
download as an app.

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You don't need to be a piano player, you
simply need to be able to put

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your fingers on the keys and play along
with some of the stuff as we do it.

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>> The only reason that we're doing this
is because it's a really

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nice visual illustration of some of the

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things that we're going to be talking
about.

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[BLANK_AUDIO]

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>> So let's get started.

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Here's a sound.

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[SOUND].

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>> And here is another sound.

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[SOUND].

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>> You'd probably say that this one is
high.

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[NOISE].

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>> Whereas this one [NOISE] is low.

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>> And that is the case in nearly every
language in the planet.

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The thing is with this sound [NOISE],
while I

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can say it's high, I can't seem to sing
it.

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[tries to sing] I can't find the note.

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>> And that's just exactly the same as
this one.

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We know it's low, but again bom, bom, bom.

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There's no, there's no note to, to latch
on to and recognize there.

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>> But compare with this, [piccolo note] which is
high, but is a note.

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La- sings same note

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[sxophone low note].

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>> And then we've got a low note.

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That's, again, something that we can sing,
we can recognize.

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>> So those two examples have what we call
Pitch.

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Okay?

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A singable musical quality to the sound,
all right?

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Now, we're going to be looking at how to
represent this stuff graphically.

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This is the written part of music.

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So, I could say obviously my note was
high, so I'll stick it up here.

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Zack's note came afterwards with low down
here, shall we, shall we say.

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That would imply that this axis is giving
us time.

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My note first, Zack's second.

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And this axis, this axis is giving us
Pitch.

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High and low, okay?

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>> And that's fine.

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But actually, it's really quite difficult
to know just how

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high that note is, or how low this note
is.

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It's not very good for us to able to give
this

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to someone else, to be able to replicate
what we did.

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You know?

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It's, it's, it's purely a, a kind of graph
of where our notes were.

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>> I can try and make a tune, like, la,
la, la, la.

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But we don't really know.

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>> Yeah, this is just a, a, Scatter Graph.

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It's just plotting where things happened,
and roughly how high or low they were.

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>> In the 7th century, Archbishop Isidore

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of Seville, said, that unless sounds could
be

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held in the memory of man, they are lost
because they cannot be written down.

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You've got to imagine you're a 9th century
monk and you've come

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up with a really great piece of music for
the church liturgy, okay?

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You can use this kind of system here, as a
memory

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jogger for you and for the people you're
immediately working with.

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But you have no musical instrument and you
have no recording devices.

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So if you wanted to send this to another
monastery, if

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you wanted to submit it to the Pope for
authentication, you couldn't.

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There's no way that anyone else would be
able to interpret these dots.

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They struggled with this right through,
until in

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the 16th century, they came up with this.

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[BLANK_AUDIO]

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Five lines called a Stave, or if you're
American, a Staff.

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Okay?

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These five lines are like a grid system
that can be overlaid onto those dots.

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Now we have some relativity that we can
work with.

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Right.

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So we got this stave, and I'm going to put
a symbol here,

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which you'll probably recognize.

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Now, these monks started naming the notes.

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Things like Do Re Mi, which we still use.

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But, also, particularly in English
speaking countries, letters

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from the alphabet, and we'll start with A.

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Which on the piano, sounds like.

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[MUSIC]

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A, and I'll put that right here, on this
space.

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So that's, A.

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>> Okay, so we said it was alphabetical.

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So the next thing obviously is B, and that
sits on the line, just above that space.

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>> B.

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>> You guessed it.

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The next one is C, and that's in the space
above.

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>> C.

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>> And then we've got D on the next line.

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>> D.

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>> E on the next space.

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>> E.

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>> F on the next line.

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>> F.

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>> G compares just on top of the stave.

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>> G.

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>> And then it looks like we've ran out of
stave actually, but we can, we

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can write notes that are higher than this

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and there's a trick for getting around
that.

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Richard's going to show you [CROSSTALK].

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>> It's called a Ledger Line, and that
gets us that note.

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>> Okay, so on that note if we were
following

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that up alphabetically, A, B, C, D, E, F,
G.

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Not H, what we get is another.

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>> A.

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>> Okay, so we can say that our musical
alphabet runs A,

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B, C, D, E, F, G and then the sequence
starts repeating itself.

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>> Going down, I'm just going to come down
to

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this stave and A goes down, of course, to
G.

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>> And then if you keep going down we've
got an F

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and the space, E on the line, D perched
just below the stave.

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And again, we've got the same problem.

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But as Richard says, we can use a short
line, which

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is temporary and it's called a Ledger Line
that represents our C.

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We can draw them, the line again, and
write the next note in the

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space below, that gives us a B and we can
keep going with this.

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So, so the next thing is two ledger lines.

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And all we're doing is temporarily
extending the stave when we

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do this and this takes us back down to our
E, again.

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>> Now one other thing I'll just mention.

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So we started on A and we came down to a
G.

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This G is on the line and this line is
where this symbol circles itself around.

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So this symbol can be called a G-Clef, or
more commonly nowadays, a Treble-Clef.

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But the really important thing we've got to
deal

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with is the existence of more than one A.

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And in fact now we've seen this being a C,
more than one C.

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What does that mean?

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That's what we're going to look at next.

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>> Following on from this idea of having
more than one

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of any given note represented at different
points on the stave.

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Let's use the guitar as an illustration.

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So on the guitar, if we play this string,
[SOUND] we get an A.

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Now this instrument makes sound by having
a string that vibrates.

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If I was to put my finger halfway along
the length

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of that string, [SOUND] it now vibrates at
double the frequency.

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This is what we call an Octave.

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This A [SOUND] is an octave higher than
[SOUND] this A.

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But we can hear, although there are
different notes on there're

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different points on the instrument, they
do sound equivalent in some way.

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And this is something that we'll recognize
intuitively, and

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we'll be able to illustrate that with our
voices.

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Okay, so imagine you're at a party.

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Sing:Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to
you.

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That's quite enough of that!

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but, I sang high, the part that often
children

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or, some women would sing, and Zack sang
low.

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We were singing the same melody.

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You always do this in your everyday life.

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We were singing in octaves.

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Okay?

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>> It sounded equivalent.

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It didn't sound weird.

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It didn't clash.

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This is what we mean by the an Octave.

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>> So again looking at our stave, let's
see what this octaves mean.

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Right here's A, and if we count these
notes,

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A being 1, B 2, C 3, D 4, E 5,

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F6, G7, number 8 is when we come back to
A.

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>> That's not going to be much of a
surprise

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to us given that we've called it an
Octave.

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>> The 8.

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>> So we've looked at these notes on the
stave, but let's just go

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back to the keyboard so we can look at
where they are on an instrument.

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So the A that we've started with was here.

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[SOUND] We never got that A.

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An octave above [SOUND] up here.

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So we had A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and A.

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And you'll notice that that's just used
every line and space on the stave,

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but we've only used the white notes

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on a piano and that's going to become
important.

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We'll talk about that more in a minute.

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We can go down to A.

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[piano plays]

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A, G, F, E, B, C, B, and right down to A.

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So again, just to highlight this idea of
the octaves.

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We've got an A here.

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We've got an A here.

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We've got an A here.

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We've even got an A up here, and this

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carries on both ways up and down the
piano.

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>> Great.

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So we've seen the notes on the keyboard.

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We've been writing them down.

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You need a way to remember where they are

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on the stave, if you don't already read
music.

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>> So as Richard said, this is called the
G-Clef, the Treble Clef and if we wanted,

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we could always go back to first
principles and

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count everything from this G on the second
line.

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[CROSSTALK].

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>> G, A, B, C, D, E [CROSSTALK].

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>> That's going to take a long time
though.

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So, we've got some nice ways to remember
it.

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>> So, if I start on the bottom line, it's
an E.

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Then the next line is a G.

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The next line is a B.

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The next one a D.

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And then the line at the top is an F.

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E G B D F could spell Every Good Boy
Deserves Fruit.

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>> Football.

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>> Fun.

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>> Food.

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>> And, if we go to the spaces, the bottom
space is

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F, the next space is an A, a C, then an E:
F-A-C-E.

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>> So, that's a way to remember the lines
and the spaces separately,

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but of course we've always got to remember
that it's part of a spectrum.

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So at the bottom we've got E line, F on
the

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space, G line, A on the space and so on
alphabetically.

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These two things come together.

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[BLANK_AUDIO]