![]() For the purposes of this exercise the melody C – C is identical to D – D or G – G as they are all unison melodies (i.e., they have 0 as their pitch difference). This is because we are only interested in relative pitch, not absolute notes. Now, you might be wondering why combinations like G# - F and E – A are not included. How many two note melodies can be written within an octave? This one is easy and all combinations can be written out: Melodies that go up in pitch We will tackle this problem by starting with the simplest possible melody - one consisting of two notes - and then building up the melody length one note at a time until we see a pattern that can be turned into a formula. So we can include all of the notes within the octave, including the octave jump (from C to C') as otherwise Over the Rainbow would not count as a melody! The notes are: C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B, C'. I've not restricted this to just a major or minor scale as many great melodies use accidentals (the black notes in a C major scale). Any of the 13 chromatic notes of the octave can be used.All melodies should be contained within an octave - C to C' inclusive.For the first section I've discounted rhythm so as to focus only on the permutations of notes.Remember the "old grey whistle test"? If it can be played on a tin whistle - it's a melody. The melodies will be a single stream of notes - no chords, counter-melodies or basslines - just a single line of music.The first thing to do is to lay down some ground rules. You can have 4 sixteenths notes in one beat.So, to counter the fear of there being no new melodies, I thought it would be interesting to examine the number of melodies available to a composer looking at his blank stave to see how many there potentially are. The note symbol for an eighth note is:Ī sixteenths note is again half as long as an eighth note. ![]() You can thus have two eighth notes in one beat. Eighths notes and sixteenths notesĪn eighth note has a duration half of that of the quarter note, which means a half beat. Generally spoken, the stem is upwards for notes in the lower half of the staff, and downwards in the upper half. The stem of a note (the little vertical bar) can be pointed upwards (as in our previous examples), but also downwards. The first 2 are durations, the last 2 are intervals. Remark: whole note and half note have nothing to do with whole tone and half tone. You will hear the metronome count 4 beats before it starts. Listen to a sound sample of the whole note, half note and 2 quarter notes as in the staff above. And, logically, a quarter note has a duration of 1 beat. The duration of a half tone is half of that of a whole tone, so 2 beats. In 4/4 time, this corresponds to a whole measure, from where ‘whole note’ has its name. The whole note has a duration of 4 beats. You can see them displayed in the staff below. ![]() Some basic note lengths (or note values) are the whole note, the half note and the quarter note. Notation of note lengths in the staff Whole note, half note and quarter note When you clap your hands or tap your toes when you listen to a piece of music, you do that normally on every beat. You can measure note lengths in number of beats but this can also be in fractions of a beat.īut, what is exactly a beat? What is a beat?Ī beat could be defined as the basic rhythmic unit in music. ![]() Note lengths are important in music: a note can be played (very) short, (very) long and everything in between. For complete Piano review guide follow PianoOpedia Note lengths ![]()
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