Overview:
The keyboard is an important resource in helping to identify half-step and whole-step relationships between pitches and notes, learning the difference between high and low pitches, and learning to read music notation. In this class, the keyboard will be the focus for interpreting the music staff and basic music symbols designating pitch and duration.
Objectives:
Students will be able to:
- Identify the pitches on the keyboard.
- Identify and label the properties of the music staff.
- Draw music symbols on the music staff.
- Define enharmonic pitches.
- Discover the relationship between the keyboard and the music staff.
Introduction
The keyboard (piano, organ, or synthesizer) is the most common interface for understanding and making music. Because of the close relationship between the keyboard and the Western system of music notation, learning the keyboard layout will help you visualize and understand a wide variety of musical concepts.
The keyboard is a collection of black and white keys. There are 52 white keys and 36 black keys on a full-size keyboard.
Some electronic keyboard instruments and some synthesizers have fewer keys, more commonly 76 or 49 keys. The keyboard we will use in this course is the full keyboard above, minus the three first keys on the left.
Throughout this course you will be able to play on a Virtual Keyboard every time you see the icon on the left. This icon will open a separate window. Try it now.
Keyboard x
Each key on the piano represents a specific pitch that sounds when that key is pressed. Pressing successive keys to the right produces tones that are slightly higher than the previous one. Naturally, if you press successive keys to your left, each tone will be slightly lower than the one before it.
The following movie provides a brief explanation of the keyboard.
The KeyboardCounting the first and last keys, there are always eight white keys between a letter name and its next occurrence up or down on the keyboard. This set of eight keys is called an octave. This designation is easy to remember because it uses the prefix oct-, which means eight, just like octopus and octagon.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | A |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
The octave always has 8 white keys (counting the first and last keys) and 5 black keys. Regardless of which key you start on, the octave pattern repeats every 8 keys.
There are several systems to avoid confusion between the same letter names happening in different octaves. In this course, we will use the Acoustical Society of America system of octave designation, which labels pitches with capital letters and numbers from left to right in the keyboard, according to the octave in which they appear.
Octave registers are labeled from C to C, starting with C1 on the low register of the keyboard and ending with C8, the last C on the keyboard. Pitches that fall within an octave from C to C belong to that octave register. For example, all the pitches between C3 and C4 are labeled with the octave register 3, i.e. C3, D3, E3, F3, G3, A3, and B3. The next C up starts the next octave register, and is, therefore, labeled C4.
The following example shows the octave designation for two pitches: C and F. Listen carefully to the same pitches on the different octaves.
Octave nomenclature and register of C and F