Basics of Music Notation

🕐 10 min - Let's slide through the notes and lines!

• Make sure 'Notation' is selected under 'Tools' - 'Visuals'.
• Show the staff on the screen and explain what it is. (In Western notation a set of lines on, between, above and below which notes of music are written. - Grove Music Online)
  • How many lines are there in the staff? (A five-line staff has been the most widely used type since north French manuscripts of the early 13th century containing polyphony. - Grove Music Online)
• Show how the notes look like. They are the actual representation of the musical pitches, so the higher the note is, the higher it is placed on the staff.
• Explain what 'high' and 'low' is regarding the pitch. To help understand it better, do a short and fun task:
  • The class does a vocal glissando together - each student slides from the lowest pitch they can sing to the highest!
  • Add the body movement: students start with the low notes squatting down and then, with the pitch going upwards, gradually stand up and lift their arms.

🕐 15 min - Exercise 1 - Beyond the staff

• Keeping in mind that notes can be written on, between, above and below the lines, ask students to count how many notes they can write on a staff! (11)
  • Try to write the notes on a staff paper!
  • Remember - from the third line upwards, the stems of separate notes should go downwards!
• Demonstrate on an instrument you have available - there are much more than 11 notes!
  • Do you have any ideas how the notes outside the range of the staff could be notated?
• Listen to Pre-Chorus 1 and Chorus 1 of 'Falling Slowly' by Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova.
  • Show students where the 1st vocal line is and how the notes on ledger lines look like.
• Listen to the same excerpt once again and invite students to do movements along the song:
  • They start in a standing position.
  • Everytime the red line on the screen reaches a note on a ledger line below the staff, they should squat down.
    • They can remain squatting down only if there are two or more notes on a ledger line below the staff in a row.
    • Whenever there is a note on the five staff lines, they should stand up again!
  • Everytime the red line on the screen reaches a note on a ledger line above the staff, they should lift their arms - and then lower them once the notes are back on the staff!

🕐 5 min - Exercise 2 - The very beginning

• Rewind the song to the beginning.
• Show the clef and explain that it is a sign that indicates the pitch of one of its lines (and hence of the other lines).
  • There are several different clefs.
  • This particular one is called treble or G clef - see how it's curved around the 2nd line where the G note is located!
• Ask students to take their staff paper again and practice drawing the treble clef!

🕐 5 min - Exercise 3 - Clap-line

• Select another song from the Song Library, preferably, something in a quicker tempo. It could be 'Sunday Best' by Surfaces again or any other song students vote for!
• Show how the song is divided in units, each of them of the same duration. They are called measures.They are marked by the vertical lines drawn through the staff, called bar-lines.
• Invite students to listen to the song, follow the notation and clap (or do any other body percussion) every time the red line on the screen reaches a bar-line.

🕐 5 min - Discussion

• What new terms have you learned?
• If you invented musical notation, how would it look like?

Challenge students to go beyond the lesson by...

• Exploring the Song Library and finding staff, clef, bars and notes on ledger lines in a different song.

• Assigning the chatbot classes 'Reading and Singing the Notes' to them as homework.