Clefs and Transposition: What Players Actually Read
A clef fixes one pitch and the staff follows. Transposing instruments move it again, so the same written note reaches the audience at different pitches.
Topic
Fundamentals
Pitch, notation, intervals and scales — the vocabulary everything else on this site assumes.
Notation is a technology with a history and a set of conventions that are easy to half-learn. These articles cover the parts that everything else depends on: how intervals are counted, how key signatures are ordered and read, what octave numbers mean in notation, software and instrument ranges, and how clefs and transposition change what a player sees on the page.
Key Signatures and the Order of Sharps and Flats
Sharps arrive in the order F C G D A E B and flats in reverse. The order is the circle of fifths written out, one signature at a time.
Reading Intervals at Sight: Generic and Specific
Naming an interval at sight takes two passes: count the staff positions first, then judge what the accidental does to the size.
Scientific Pitch Notation: What C4 Actually Means
Middle C is C4 in scientific pitch notation, C3 on some manufacturers' labelling, and MIDI note 60 in every sequencer. The numbering is a convention.
The ebook
Music Theory — the site as a book
The site's working library as a structured ebook: intervals, keys, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, form, tuning, orchestration and the history behind them.
- 78 pages
- PDF format
- $2.87 only
- By The musics.name project
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