I know music theory is boring for all the guitarists and other instrumentalists. But there is much to gain from understanding how the music works and why certain things sound good together. If you treat music as any other language that you’ve learnt then you’ll realize that every language can be broken down into its most fundamental particle and that is the alphabets.
Therefore let’s start our first lesson by learning the alphabet of the Music Language and it is not that hard. You can mark it around a circle so as to memorize them easily.
Below is the Note Circle – Alphabets of the Music Langauge.
There are essentially 12 notes/letters of Music. Six of them we call it Naturals and the rest in between we call them accidentals.
So if we start from A (see 12 o’clock in the note circle) and go clockwise we get B and then C and then D and so on till we reach G and again we start from A. These are called Naturals. Letter without any sharps(#) or flats(♭).
If you’re going clockwise starting from the A. The letter you’ll be using between A and B will be A# (A-sharp) because you’re raising the letter A, you’re sharpening it. Similarly if you go clockwise from C to D. The letter you’ll use in between C and D will be C# (C-sharp) because you’re raising the C.
Now let’s say that you’re going counter clockwise from B to A. So the letter you’ll use between B and A will B♭( B-Flat) because you’re flattening the B.
Let’s take another example. Let’s say that you’re going from F to G clockwise. So the letter you’ll use will F# (F-sharp) because you’re raising F.
So it’s all about which letter you’re coming from.
Now I know what you’re thinking. The questions arises whether A# and B♭are the same notes or not?
The answer is yes . The notes that have different letter-name but they sound the same are called enharmonic equivalent of each other. Therefore F# and G♭ or C# and D♭are the same notes but with different names. You might ask why they exist; it just complicates stuff, right? Just bear with me it actually simplifies a lot of concepts in music theory that you’ll find out later.
So the alphabets of music language are – A A#/B♭ B C C#/D♭ D D#/E♭ E F F#/G♭ G G#/A♭.
The only exception to this rule is – I’m sure you must have noticed it – that between the letter B and C and letters E and F there are no sharps and flats. This is all because of physics and I’m not gonna go scientific about frequency and all in this article. I just want you to remember this rule for now. Maybe you can study when you’re an intermediate in music theory, for now, no need to scratch your head for this.
Below is a small quiz for you to test your knowledge. (Answer key is Here)
- Write down the correct answers for the given questions.
- If you’re going clockwise from A to B. Which letter you’ll use to represent the note in between?
- If you’re going clockwise from D to E. Which letter you’ll use to represent the note in between?
- If you’re going counter clockwise from A to G. Which letter you’ll use to represent the note in between?
- If you’re going counter clockwise from D to C. Which letter you’ll use to represent the note in between?
- Which are the two notes that do not get flatten?
That will be all for this lesson. Next lesson is here.
Thank you,
SonorousMoose xD
A food for thought before we begin our first step into the world of theory – Music theory is nothing but categorization of sounds that sound good together, nothing more.
