Lesson Four Pitch

Pitch refers to the highness or lowness of a sound. We hear sounds around us all the time. Sounds made by the elements of nature, by animals, by machines, and by other human beings. 1. Make a list of high sounds that you hear in your daily life. 2. Make a list of low sounds that you hear everyday. 3. Do you ever hear sounds that start low and then get higher? Name some. 4. Do you ever hear sounds that start high and then become low? Name some.

Identifying High and Low Pitches 1. Listen to this song on the teaching video. 2. Notice the way that my hands indicate high and low as I sing these pitches in the song. “I can sing high. I can sing low. I can sing in between. Sometime high; sometimes low – Guess what I am now”. 3. Can you figure out where the high and low sounds are at the end? Show your answer by putting your hands in the correct position.

Reading High and Low Pitches 1.Hold your hand in front of you so you are looking at your palm and your thumb is point upwards. 2.This is called your hand staff. 3.How many fingers do you have? (5) This is just like the staff that has five lines. How many spaces are in between your fingers? (4) This is just like the spaces on the staff Lines Spaces

Pitch Names Locate your middle finger - just like your belly button is in the middle of your body, your middle finger is in the middle of the staff. It is called “b”. In music we have seven note names that go a, b, c, d e, f, g a, b, c, d e, f, g And then they repeat. It is easy to figure out the names of the notes if you remember where “b” (belly button b) is located on your hand staff. Watch the video that goes with this lesson to see if you can figure out all the note names. b c d e f a g f e

Pitch Pitch refers to the highness or lowness of a sound. In music the highness or lowness of a sound is determined by its placement on the staff. High sound Low sound Click on the speaker icon ( ) to listen to the sound of each note Sounds may be placed on one of the lines or spaces

Melody When you put a row of notes together they create a melody or tune Can you guess the name of the melody? Notice how the notes in this melody move from line to space and space to line. This is known as step-wise motion Click the icon: That’s right! It is “Mary Had A Little Lamb”.

Treble Clef Find a piano keyboard and play some of the notes to the far right. They are very high. If you were to write some of these notes on the staff (five lines), you would put a treble clef at the start of the staff. The treble clef placed at the beginning of the staff shows that the notes on the staff are high.

Notes in the Treble Clef Each note in the treble clef has its own name that you will recognize as the first seven letters of the alphabet Click on the icon and listen to how they move from high to low

The staff has five lines and four spaces. EGBDF The notes on the lines can be remembered by thinking of the words: Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. F A C E The notes in the spaces spell a very familiar word: F A C E. Lines and Spaces

Ledger Lines There are also notes which can be written above or below The extra lines drawn for these notes are called ledger lines

Note Name Review #1 Name the notes in the following melody Refer back to Slide 12 if you need some help. Using Noteworthy Composer insert the notes below and their letter names. Now listen to the melody. Do you recognize it? Now listen to how a famous composer, Mozart, used this melody in one of his compositions Notice how he uses skips as well as steps in the melody skip step

Note Name Review #2 Name the notes in this melody written by Joseph Haydn. Using Noteworthy Composer insert the notes below and their letter names Now listen to how he used this melody in his “Surprise Symphony”

Using Noteworthy Composer Using Noteworthy Composer Double click on the program icon. Close the “Did you know?” window Go to File – select “new” Select “blank score” from the Song Templates Window. Click “OK”. Type in a name for your Note Name Review 1 or 2 Type in your name as “author-composer”. Click “OK”. YOU ARE NOW READY TO BEGIN

Press the letter “C”. Select “treble clef” from the drop box. Click “OK”. Select a whole note (semibreve) from the tool bar at the top of the screen. Using the arrow keys scroll up or down until you find the position of the first note in Note Naming Exercise 1. Press enter to insert the note. Continue this process until you have entered each note in exercise one. To enter the note names go to the tool bar on the top and click the large “L”. A box will open. From the drop box entitled “Line Count” select “1 st Lyric Line”. Then click on the tab “Lyric 1”. Type in the letter names of the notes separating each one with a space. When you are finished click “Save”. You should be able to view the letter names under the correct notes.

Online Support For more enrichment on the topic of Pitch go to: Gary Ewer’s theory page Read: Homework Enter Note Name Review 1 & 2 into Noteworthy Composer and upload the file in the correct place in Blackboard. You will be able to self correct your responses using the answer sheets found on Blackboard. Remember to save your file as Lesson 4 and your name. (Example: Lesson 4 Ruth Morrison)