Accidentals

Now we know how to identify the white keys on the keyboard, let's talk about the black keys! But before that, we'll learn what Accidentals are.

Up above we have listed the three most common accidentals. Each of these symbols are specific directions that are applied to notes in music like so:

When a note is sharp, that means the individual note is played up a single Half Step. So! What is a Half Step? A half step is when (On a keyboard) you move from the note you play up to the very next note:

Now if we start at Middle C, and we go up a Half Step, we find ourselves at C# (C Sharp). Now if we were to start at the note of "D" and go down a half step:

And this is what we call D♭ or D flat. Note: D flat and C Sharp are the same note! The term for the same note written in different ways is called Enharmonic. Now when a sharp is added to a note (Say F) it carries throughout the entire measure!

So in our second measure shown above. The first Half note is F-Sharp. And since Accidentals carry throughout the entire measure, the second Half note is also F-Sharp. But what if we wanted the second note to be F and not F-Sharp? That is where our third and final symbol comes into play. The Accidental is a Natural sign. This negates any effects of a Sharp or Flat sign and returns the note to it's original sound. A Natural sign can be found in the photo above on measure 4.

Now we have covered the main ideas of Accidentals! Now I'll touch up on one strange idea that stifled me as a young musician. If you look at a keyboard, you will find that there are two places where there is not a single black key to fit in between the white ones. You'll find this situation between E-F and B-C. That is simply because the note "F" is one Half Step above E and vice versa! This can be confusing when music writers write in accidentals such as F-flat or B-Sharp. They must simply be looked at as instructions to go from the listed note, up a half step. So for all the readers out there: B-sharp is simply "C" and F-flat is simply "E". Till next time!

Measures/Time Signatures

Alrighty! Now in our music, we may have noticed some weird vertical lines on our musical Staff. The staff is just the 5 black lines and white spaces in between and is what we write our notes on! Bar Lines are what separate the Staff into smaller segments called Measures so that we can work on chunks of music at a time as shown below:

At the end of the piece, the very last Measure will have two Bar Lines that signify the end of the piece. Now off to the left of our photo you may see the fraction 4/4 to the left of our staff at the very beginning. That is called our Time Signature and is found at the beginning of every piece and sometimes throughout. The best way my students have applied this concept is to look at the Time Signature as a fraction. The top number shows how many Beats are found in a measure. The bottom number explains what we classify as a single beat. For example!

As shown in red above, our time signature is 4/4. So we have 1/4 note (Quarter note) that counts as a beat. And the top number shows that we have 4 beats per measure. So our measure is full with 4 quarter notes.

Now not all music will have a Time Signature of 4/4 and in fact, the next example I'll show is a 6/8 Time Signature:

Now from the bottom note we can find the fraction 1/8 (Eighth), which means an Eighth note signifies one beat. Now if we look at the top number (6) we know that there are Six beats in our measure. So up above we see that the measure is full with six eighth-notes. And that's about it! 'Till next time :)

How to Read Sheet Music -001

This is an example of some simple sheet music. With sheet music, we can represent every note on our keyboard. 

Now we as musicians use different shapes for how long a note should be. Since music uses beats, we have developed symbols to indicate how many beats a particular note is played for. A Whole Note is held for 4 beats. A Half Note is precisely that. Half of a whole so 2 beats. Quarter Notes have a single beat. Eighth Notes have half of a beat. And a Sixteenth Note is half of that. These are the basic types of note lengths in a 4/4 time signature. We will discuss what that means later on.

Now to reference back up to our picture: 

The leftmost quarter note is called Middle C. Followed by D, E, F, G, A, and lastly B. We call it Middle C because if we were to look at a keyboard, it would be found in the center of the keyboard:

Anyhow that's if for now! We'll touch up on some more music theory later. See ya next time!

Notes

Now a piano has many different keys (88 to be exact) and each one has it's own unique sound. Some are similar and others contrast with each other. The combination of these keys are called Chords. But before we get into that let's take a look at each note!

As you can see above, all of our keys are labeled with the first 7 letters of the Alphabet. 

Thanks to Shutterstock, we can view our entire keyboard up here. The white key to the very left is named as "A" and as we move up the white keys to the right the naming is as follows: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, etc., up until the final white key at the end (C)

These are the basic notes on a keyboard.

How to Play Piano

Alright readers out there. I have decided that I will share what I know about piano, starting with the basics and going from there. What I have come to know is that even professionals are always learning and while I may not be a professional just yet, I too am learning. If there is error in any of the theory or instructions I give, message me and I'll be quick to correct it! Perhaps some of this may be of help to you all!

-Tanner W.

Blizst No. 1 In C Major

This was an experiment of mine with a focus on writing a song entirely with software and never touching a real keyboard. I didn't know what to call it, so I invented my own type of song: a Blizst. Which is a short, upbeat song focused mainly on the melody with little to no base (to keep chords simple) and I thought I might as well share this creation with you guys! Blizst No. 1 in C Major :)

New Album Photo!

Got a photo for an album (Drawn by Kristi Fisk)