[animations of a clef with notes, narrator speaks:]Our next lesson is about musical notes. Simply put, notes tell you the length of time, or duration of a musical sound. Remember that time in music is expressed in beats per measure, and since notes tell us how long to play a certain sound within a measure, notes are also expressed as part of a measure.
In the previous lesson we learned that the staff tells us the pitch of a musical sound. We use notes to tell us when to play that sound, and how many beats of the measure to make it last. There are a number of different notes you need to know about. This is a whole note. A whole note lasts for the whole measure. This is a half note. A half note lasts for half of the measure. This is a quarter note. A quarter note lasts for one quarter of the measure. This is an eighth note. It lasts for one eighth of a measure. Eighth notes are shown like this when they come one after the other. We could go on there are more types of notes. There are sixteenth notes, and thirty-second notes, even sixty-fourth, and one hundred twenty eighth notes, but for now we will stick with the basic types of notes we just learned.
This staff with a treble clef will help us learn more about notes. Remember the "c" means to use 4/4 time, so we know there are four beats per measure. As we mentioned at the first of the lesson a note tells us how long a musical sound lasts. Lets start by putting a whole note on the part of the staff that is reserved for the musical pitch "A". We have just written one measure of music. With a whole note on "A" we know to play the sound with the musical pitch "A" for the entire measure, because a whole note lasts for the whole measure. Here is how this measure is played. Here is a measure with two half notes. The first note is on the space representing "A", and the second one is on "C". Half notes tell us to play the pitches for one half of the measure. Since we are using 4/4 time, half of the measure is two beats. Here is how this measure sounds. Here is an example of quarter notes. The first is on "A", the second on "C", the third on "F", and the fourth again on "C". Each quarter note in 4/4 time lasts for one beat, or one fourth of the measure. The measure is played like this.
Earlier in the tape we learned about sharp and flat pitch. This symbol when placed next to the note, on the line representing a specific pitch, might look like this. This tells us to play that pitch sharp for the rest of the measure. For example, this note tells you to play the pitch "G". If the symbol for a sharp note is added we are simply instructed to play the "G" sharp every time it occurs in that measure. When this symbol is added to the note, we are instructed to play the pitch flat. This is "G" again, and this is "G" flat. This symbol is called a natural. It is used to restore the line or space to its natural pitch, from a sharp or flat pitch.