The hotbed for musical activity is the Church. Monks sing religious songs known as "Plainchant", and a monk's training includes years' of memorising plainsongs by heart. The portfolio of songs is becoming unmanageable and a way of sorting and categorising the songs is needed. A system called neumes is developed to solve this problem. Strange looking flecks and squiggles are written above the words to each song.
These symbols tell the singers when the pitch is rising or falling. They don't give any indication of how high or how low each note is in relation to its neighbours, and there is no attempt to notate the rhythm.
But it's a start. The system catches on like wildfire, with each monastery across Europe making its own in-house "improvements" - different shaped symbols are used for small groups of notes.
Benedictine monk Guido d'Arezzo is a music teacher extraordinaire. It is Guido who has the bright idea of drawing a line on the page, so that neumes can be placed with a fixed pitch. He begins by using a single red line, which he labels with one note - either F or C.
This is the starting point. Neumes are then written on the line, above it or below it, showing relative pitch. The note letter placed at the beginning of the line will become known as the clef.
Guido develops his system over the years, adding extra lines and different colours. His system is widely adopted, and it is the four-line stave which gains most favour.
At the same time, the squiggly neumes are gradually replaced with square-shaped note symbols. By the 12th century we find plenty of manuscripts using a 5-line stave.
We also find the first key signatures which at this stage consist of just one flat. There were no sharp key signatures at this time. Mensural notation is born - in other words, they figure out how to make a musical note represent both pitch and rhythm.
Plainchants have become so complicated rhythmically, that a method is needed to notate the rhythm, rather than leave it up to the memory alone. A complex system is derived, which allows for four basic "time signatures" called "mensurations". Theorists decide that there are two types of rhythm - duple and triple.
Each of those can be further subdivided into a duple or triple rhythm, making four possibilities. The key of C major has no sharps or flats in the key signature. The other key signatures can have between 1 to 7 sharps and 1 to 7 flats, giving us the other 14 key signatures. It is important to memorize the order of sharps and flats, since you will be writing key signatures regularly.
It is the reverse of the order of sharps. E flat Eb was probably discovered next around the year A. D and became the 3rd black note that was found. Music grew again by a tetra chord counter-clockwise.
C sharp C was probably discovered around the year A. Music grew yet again by a tetra chord clockwise. The 5th and final black note discovered was G sharp G , also known as A flat Ab around the year A. There was no room for this new note on the staff.
Suddenly, music grew 6 more tetra chords counter-clockwise and clockwise, completing the circle of the entire music spectrum. The entire music spectrum consists of 48 notes, 36 steps, and 12 half-steps, encompassing all twelve Major keys. Sometimes notes are double sharps represented by an X symbol in front of the note to sharpen it twice, raising it by a whole step. Sometimes notes are double flats represented by 2 flat symbols bb in front of the note to flatten it twice, lowering it by a whole step.
Other times, notes that are already sharps or flats need to be natural, represented by a natural symbol in front of the note. From the year A. The Willoughby Scale is my personal attempt to fix this confused system and replace it with order and simplicity.
It also explores the science of mathematics and harmony for future generations. Western Music left us with 12 notes that can be arranged in a circle in a clock formation, starting at C up top. Three note chords can be connected in this circle to form triangles, and four notes chords can be connected to form trapezoids.
Europeans have sung in octaves in the 7 church modes for centuries in Europe, until the 5 black notes were discovered.
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