Overview:
Every culture in the world has language and music. Like language, music can have an oral tradition as well as a written one. Although oral tradition in music is alive and well in almost every type of society, literate societies have also evolved certain systems of graphic notations to represent sounds and the interpretation of those sounds.Curriculum and the design of effective lesson plans are central to every classroom experience. Students will discover the essential parts of an effective lesson plan and how these elements are influenced by the formal curriculum.
Objectives:
Students will be able to:
- Compare and contrast syllabic and alphabetic notation systems.
- Interpret the relative lengths of notational duration including equivalent rests.
- Compare and contrast traditional notation with stick notation.
Introduction
A music notation system is the collection of symbols that people use to represent and interpret sounds. Think about it as a set of written instructions or blueprint that serves two main purposes: First, to preserve the musical heritage of a people or culture, and second, to allow people to recreate musical works by following the directions that someone else has committed to paper. Music notation is, therefore, a form of communication among musicians that usually happens between composer and performer.
Music notation also refers to the writing of notes. Depending on the historical period and culture, this has taken many different forms and served different functions.
In recent centuries, the standard method in most Western music traditions has been staff notation. Other forms of notation have also been used, however. Some contemporary music, for example, uses imaginative forms of graphic notation.
The two systems of music notation most used are the alphabetic and the syllabic systems.
In the alphabetic system—which is the one we will use in this course—pitches are identified by letter names from A to G. In the syllabic, they are identified by the syllables do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and ti, introduced by Guido d'Arezzo, an Italian monk who lived between c.995 and 1050. This practice is known as solmization.
| Music Notation Systems | |||||||
| Alphabetic | A | B | C | D | E | F | G |
| Syllabic | la | ti | do | re | mi | fa | sol |
Please keep in mind, however, that the term notation encompasses not only pitch names, but the whole collection of symbols that convey instructions from the composer to the performer, including, among other things, the rhythm, speed, and volume of the music to be played.