Overview
Welcome to OnMusic Jazz!
Although this course does not expect you to learn to read or play music, or require previous music experience, basic familiarity with music fundamentals and essential jazz concepts will most likely give you a good head start and enhance your learning experience.
With that in mind, this section presents a broad overview of basic music elements such as the keyboard, scales, pitch, rhythm, meter, and form, on which to some of essential features and the sounds of jazz, including improvisation and swing feeling. We will also cover the defining characteristics of blues music, how the unique sounds of blues originated, how these sounds were absorbed into jazz, and some of the differences between blues and jazz.
These lessons will be especially beneficial if you don’t have basic musical or jazz knowledge, but they can also be valuable even if you already have both. The goal is to offer you the information and tools that will let you become familiar with some fundamental music concepts.
Objectives
Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to do the following:
- Distinguish sharp notes from flat notes
- Identify keys on a keyboard that are a half-step or whole step apart
- Define an octave
- Describe some basic scales
- Recognize on the musical staff the clef, time signature, notes, and measures
- Define beat, tempo, note, rhythm, and meter
- Distinguish among simple meters such as duple, triple, and quadruple
- Define pickup
- Define syncopation
Diatonic Scale
Whenever individuals begin learning a musical instrument, they generally start with the C major scale, which is a diatonic scale (A seven-note musical scale made up of five whole steps and two half-steps) beginning on the note C and continuing with each successive letter-name note up to the note B. These notes correspond to the solfège syllables with which you may already be familiar: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do.
The eighth note of the scale—the second "do," or the second note C—is an octave (A span of eight letter-name notes) above the starting pitch.
In our musical language, there are two principal types of diatonic scales:
- The major scale (A diatonic scale that features the following pattern of whole (W) and half-steps (H): W W H W W W H W) (for example, C to C on the white keys is the C major scale)
- The minor scale (A diatonic scale that features the following pattern of whole (W) and half-steps (H): W H W W H W W W) (for example, A to A on the white keys is the A minor scale)
Use the interactive keyboard to play a C major scale using all the white keys from C to C. Then, play an A minor scale using all the white keys from A to A.
Enharmonic Accidentals
What makes a scale either major or minor is the specific succession of whole steps The combination of two semitones; also known as a tone or whole tone. (W) and half steps The smallest pitch difference between two sounds in most Western music systems; also known as a semitone. (H) in the scale. Note that there are more whole steps than there are half steps. For example, the C major scale — and every other major scale — consists of the following succession:
W W H W W W H
The following interactive exercise features the C major scale. Study it carefully to memorize the distribution of whole (W) and half steps (H) in the major scale. When the animation finishes, you may click on W or H to see and hear where whole steps and half steps fall within the major scale. In particular, notice how the whole tone between steps 4 and 5 divides the scale into two equal halves of four notes each.
The Major Scale Pattern
Chromatic Scale
In addition to the diatonic (seven-note) scale, there is another musical scale called the chromatic scaleA musical scale containing twelve pitches, each a semitone apart., made up of twelve pitches. This scale comprises the complete succession of semitones along the span of an octave. For example, the ascending chromatic scale starting on C looks like:
C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B
Chromatic Semitones
Chromatic scale (using sharps)
Try playing the chromatic scale on the keyboard below. Notice that every successive pitch has the same semitone relationship to the previous one. Compare that to the diatonic scale, which has identity by virtue of the arrangement of whole steps and half steps.
The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the basic miracle of music, the use of which is common in most musical systems.
Enharmonic Pitches