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.
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
Staves and Clefs
A staffA set of five horizontal lines used in music notation. (pl. staves) is a set of five horizontal lines used in music notation. At the beginning of the staff is a clefA symbol in music notation used to indicate the range of pitches to be played., which indicates the range of pitches to be played. The four clefs that are typically found in music scores are the treble, bass, alto, and tenor clefs. Of these, the two most common ones are the treble clefA clef used to indicate a higher range of notes.and the bass clefA clef used to indicate a lower range of notes..
- The treble clefA clef used to indicate a higher range of notes. indicates a higher range of notes.
- The bass clefA clef used to indicate a lower range of notes. indicates a lower range of notes.
- The alto and tenor clefs affix middle C On an 88-key keyboard, the fourth C note from the left.(C4) on the third and fourth line of the staff, respectively.
Click "Show Me" in the interactive exercise below to view a demonstration of these four clefs.
Clef Names
Clefs
The grand staffA set of staves that incorporates the treble and bass clefs. combines the treble and bass clefs, which is typically how piano music is notated. Click "Show Me" in the interactive exercise below to see how the grand staff is put together.
The Grand Staff
The grand staff
The notion of an octave is fairly universal--and there are a lot of psychophysical explanations for this--but many music traditions, e.g., Indian classical music, divide the octave very differently from the West.
