Musical notes

When talking about Western music, every sound has a note, even your voice. Traditionally, it has always been taught that the musical notes are seven, and it's OK because they are; but it is more correct to say musical notes are twelve, because music is generally composed with the same sounds. Here you have the list of seven I am sure you know...

Do – Re – Mi – Fa – Sol – La – Ti

...and here you have the other five, named after them...

Sharp do – Sharp re – Sharp fa – Sharp sol – Sharp la

...also known as...

Flat re – Flat mi – Flat sol – Flat la – Flat ti

Together, the twelve musical notes form what musicians know as the chromatic scale...

C – C# – D – D# - E – F – F# – G – G# – A – A# – B – C

or

C – Db – D – Eb – E – F – Gb – G – Ab – A – Bb – B – C

The chromatic scale is the grounds of all Western music (I say Western music because other civilizations developed other musical arrangements, a few with even more musical notes). We still respect the old-school definition of seven musical notes to say the difference between a do and the next one (either in a higher or lower pitch) is an octave (the eighth sound), though.

Musicians usually use a staff to write down the notes they need to play in a song, but we will address this in another article. There are other things you need to learn about music first.

A few facts

+ All musical instruments play the whole musical notes. I would say only drums cannot.
+ Musical notes and chords are not the same.
+ The names of the musical notes come from a poem in Latin named "Ut queant laxis"

Continue with... Tones, half-tones and intervals

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