Musical ALTERATIONS: definition and characteristics

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Learning a new language is a way to expand our knowledge, not only because we are acquiring a new form of communication, but because understanding the roots of something allows us to expand our understanding through the concepts that we use sometimes without knowing them from the everything.

Music is an art but it is also considered a language, because it allows us deep communication. However, as it is a complex language, it is necessary to learn the spelling and grammar rules, in the musical version. In this article by a PROFESSOR we will talk about one of these areas in music writing: musical alterations: definition and characteristics.

Index

1. Concepts prior to musical alterations
2. What are musical alterations
3. Characteristics of musical alterations
4. How are musical accidentals written?

In order to better understand the definition of musical alterations, it is necessary to be clear about the following concepts:

Tuning

Tuning can be loosely translated as "the height" of a note. This is easy to see in a score because the higher it is in relation to the staff, the higher it is. Otherwise, the lower, the more serious. You can also see it on the piano, the lowest notes are on the left and the highest on the right, all keys are in pitch order. In the classical music of our western system we have notes assigned by tuning and have a name (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si).

Interval

It is the distance between one note and another. The musical unit for measuring an interval is the "tone". We also have the "semitone", which, as its name implies, is half a tone.

Musical scale

The musical scale refers to a succession of notes. When we place a series of notes of different pitch that rise or fall, with determined distances between one and the other, we are forming a scale.

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We have finally reached what interests us in this article. Knowing the previous concepts, you will be able to understand it better. Alterations serve to change the pitch of a note. The most commons are:

The sharp

They alter a half-tone note upward.

Flat

They alter a half-tone note downward.

The becuadro

They cancel the effect of a note that is already altered, that is, it returns “to normal”.

There are also other accidentals although they are not used frequently for practicality, such as the double sharp and the double flat. There were also other alterations in ancient times that we no longer use in Western music. These are: half sharp, half flat, sharp and half, flat and a half.

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In most cases the songs, pieces or musical works have been composed within a musical context, a structure that shapes the music so that we can understand it. This structure se based on rules of harmony and it is, in short, what makes the notes pleasant to the ear.

When the tuning of a note goes out of this context, that note is strange to us because it is not compatible with the rest, we call this "dissonance". Dissonance isn't necessarily unpleasant (in fact it's used a lot in genres like jazz), but it should be used with caution because it can bring a lot of musical instability and mislead an audience that is not used to it thereto.

What are musical alterations for?

Alterations are the tool that allows us to make the notes stay within this structure, or, that they break it if it is the effect we want to achieve. To understand this in more depth we must talk about the concept of tonality.

The musical tonalityit is what defines the melody and chords of a song or work. It could be said that when composing or improvising, we know what notes we can use depending on the tonality. The way we know the tonality of a composition is through the armor, which is a group of sharps or flats found at the beginning of the staff.

Each key is defined by a specific group of accidentals and depends on the musical scale of origin. For example, the tonality of Sun major, have 1 sharp on the note F. Another example: The tonality of B flat major has 2 flats (one in the note if and another in the note mi).

When we have a key signature written at the beginning of the staff, this means that these accidentals continue the rest of the work, unless the key signature (or key) changes or there are alterations individual.

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Alterations are always placed from left side of the note that we want to alter and must respect the space or line in which it is located. For example, if we want to convert an F to F sharp, we must place the sharp symbol on the fifth line of the staff, which is the place assigned for the note F.

In the case of key signatures, the group of accidentals of the desired key is placed at the beginning of the staff, without the need to place any notes and have a specific order.

• For sharps: fa, do, sol, re, la, mi, yes.
• For flats: yes, mi, la, re, sol, do, fa.

Now that you see these symbols in a sheet music you will be able to recognize them and you will realize that you have come a little closer to understanding the fascinating language of music.

If you liked reading this article by a TEACHER and have discovered things about the types of melodies and their features, we invite you to leave a comment and continue exploring the rest of the articles we have so that keep learning.

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