The Complete Idiot''s Guide to Music Theory

parts to get a better idea
of how to use the percus-
sion clef.
Tip

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Chapter 1:
Pitches and Clefs
Exercises
Exercise 1-1
Write the name of each note below the note.
15
Exercise 1-2
Write the name of each note below the note.
Exercise 1-3
Write each note on the staff.
Exercise 1-4
Write each note on the staff.
Exercise 1-5
Draw the indicated clefs on the staff.

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Part 1:
Tones
Exercise 1-6
Write the following notes above the staff.
16
Exercise 1-7
Write the following notes below the staff.
Exercise 1-8
Identify the following notes on the piano keyboard.

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2
Intervals
In This Chapter
◆
Changing pitches with sharps and flats
◆
Understanding half steps and whole steps
◆
Counting the intervals between notes
◆
Using major, minor, perfect, diminished, and augmented intervals
Lesson 2, Track 11
In the previous chapter you learned all about musical pitches: how they’re
named and how they’re presented on a staff. In this chapter we’ll go beyond
that by looking at how pitches can be raised and lowered, and how you can
describe the differences between pitches in terms of 
intervals
.
To make things as simple as possible, we’ll discuss these pitches and intervals in
terms of the C Major scale—that is, the notes between one C on the piano key-
board and the next C above that. The basic concepts can be applied to 
any
scale, as you’ll see; it’s just that sticking to a single scale makes it all a little eas-
ier to grasp. (And, at least on the piano, the C Major scale is the easiest scale to
work with—it’s all white keys!)
Be Sharp—or Be Flat
As you learned in Chapter 1, the lines and spaces on a music staff correspond
exactly to the white keys on a piano. But what about those black keys? Where
are they on the staff?
When we say there are 7 main pitches in a Western musical scale (A through
G), that’s a bit of an oversimplification: There actually are 12 possible notes in
an octave, with some of them falling between the 7 main pitches.
Just count the keys between middle C and next C on the piano—including the
black keys, but without counting the second C. If you counted correctly, you
counted 12 keys, which represent 12 pitches; each pitch/key is the same 
interval
away from the previous pitch/key.
Chapter

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