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ARTICLES IN THE BOOK

  1. 6/8 time
  2. A (note)
  3. Abc notation
  4. Accidental
  5. Articulation
  6. B (note)
  7. Bar
  8. Beam
  9. Braille Music
  10. Breath mark
  11. Canntaireachd
  12. Chord
  13. Cinquillo
  14. Clef
  15. Coda
  16. Copyist
  17. Da capo
  18. Dal segno
  19. Dotted note
  20. Double whole note
  21. Drum tablature
  22. Dynamics
  23. Eight note
  24. Ekphonetic notation
  25. Fermata
  26. Figured bass
  27. Fingering
  28. Flat
  29. Ghost note
  30. Glissando
  31. Gongche notation
  32. Grace note
  33. Grand staff
  34. Graphic notation
  35. GUIDO music notation
  36. Guido of Arezzo
  37. Halfnote
  38. Harmony
  39. Hundred twenty-eighth note
  40. Italian musical terms used in English
  41. Kepatihan
  42. Key
  43. Keyboard tablature
  44. Key signature
  45. Klavarskribo
  46. Leadsheet
  47. Ledger line
  48. Legato
  49. Letter notation
  50. Ligature
  51. Marcato
  52. Mensural notation
  53. Mensurstriche
  54. Metre
  55. Modern musical symbols
  56. Musical notation
  57. Musical scale
  58. Musical terminology
  59. Music engraving
  60. Music theory
  61. Nashville notation
  62. Natural sign
  63. Neume
  64. Note
  65. Note value
  66. Numbered musical notation
  67. Numerical sight-singing
  68. Octave
  69. Ornament
  70. Parsonscode
  71. Partbook
  72. Pizzicato
  73. Portamento
  74. Prolation
  75. Qinpu
  76. Quarter note
  77. Rastrum
  78. Rehearsal letter
  79. Repeat
  80. Rest
  81. Rhythm
  82. Rythmic mode
  83. Rhythmic notation
  84. Saptak
  85. Scientific pitch notation
  86. Shape note
  87. Sharp
  88. Sheet music
  89. Sixteenth note
  90. Sixty-fourth note
  91. Slash notation
  92. Slur
  93. Sound painting
  94. Staccatissimo
  95. Staccato
  96. Staff
  97. Swung note
  98. Tablature
  99. Tacet
  100. Tempo
  101. Tenuto
  102. Thirty-second note
  103. Tie
  104. Time signature
  105. Time unit box system (TUBS)
  106. Tongan music notation
  107. Triple metre
  108. Tuplet
  109. Unfigured bass
  110. Virtual music score
  111. Vocal score
  112. Whole note
  113. Znamennoe singing
 


MUSICAL NOTATION
This article is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_%28music%29

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License 

Accidental (music)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

An accidental is a musical notation symbol used to raise or lower the pitch of a note from that indicated by the key signature. Accidental is also used to refer to the black keys on the musical keyboard.

Standard use of accidentals

Accidentals: sharp, flat, natural
Accidentals: sharp, flat, natural

In most cases, a sharp raises the pitch of a note one semitone while a flat lowers it a semitone. A natural is used to cancel the effect of a flat or sharp.

Since about 1700, accidentals have been understood to continue for the remainder of the measure in which they occur, so that a subsequent note on the same staff position is still affected by that accidental, unless replaced by an accidental of its own. Notes on other staff positions, including those an octave away, are unaffected. Once a barline is passed, the effect of the accidental ends, except when a note affected by an accidental (either explicit or implied from earlier in the measure) is tied to the same note across a barline; see Courtesy accidentals, below.

This use contrasts with the key signature, whose effect continues throughout an entire piece, unless cancelled by another key signature. An accidental can be used to cancel or reinstate the flats or sharps of the key signature as well for the duration of a measure.

Note that in a few cases the accidental might change the note by more than a semitone: for example, if a G sharp is followed in the same measure by a G flat, the flat sign on the latter note means it will be two semitones lower than if no accidental were present. Thus, the effect of the accidental has to be understood in relation to the "natural" meaning of the note's staff position. For the sake of clarity, some composers put a natural in front of the accidental. Thus, if in this example the composer actually wanted the note a semitone lower than G-natural, he might put first a natural sign to cancel the previous G-sharp, then the flat.

Double sharp, double flat
Double sharp, double flat

Double accidentals raise or lower the pitch of a note by two semitones, an innovation developed as early as 1615. An F with a double sharp applied raises it a whole step so it is enharmonically equivalent to a G. Usage varies on how to notate the situation in which a note with a double sharp is followed in the same measure by a note with a single sharp: some publications simply use the single accidental for the latter note, whereas others use a combination of a natural and a sharp, with the natural being understood to apply to the second sharp only.

Courtesy accidentals

Although a barline is nowadays understood to cancel the effect of an accidental (except for a tied note), often publishers will use a courtesy accidental (also referred to as a cautionary accidental or a reminder accidental) as a reminder of the correct pitch if the same note occurs in the following measure. This usage varies, although a few situations are construed to require a courtesy accidental, such as

  • when the first note in a measure is one which had had an accidental applied in the previous measure
  • after a tie carries an accidental across a barline, when the same note appears again in the subsequent measure.

Other uses are inconsistently applied.

Courtesy accidentals are sometimes enclosed in parentheses to emphasize their nature as reminders.

Publishers of jazz music and some atonal music sometimes eschew all courtesy accidentals.

Microtonal notation

Quarter-tone accidentals: half-sharp, sharp, sharp-and-a-half;half-flat, flat, flat-and-a-half
Quarter-tone accidentals:
half-sharp, sharp, sharp-and-a-half;
half-flat, flat, flat-and-a-half

Composers of microtonal music have developed a number of notations for indicating the various pitches outside of standard notation. One such system for notating quarter tones, used by the Czech Alois Hába and other composers, is shown on the right.

In the 19th and beginning 20th century, when Turkish musicians switched from their traditional notation systems — which were not staff-based — to the European staff-based system, they created a refinement to the European accidental system in order to be able to notate Turkish scales which make use of intervals smaller than the tempered semitone. There are several such systems which vary as to the division of the octave they presuppose or merely the graphical shape of the accidentals. The most widely used system (created by Rauf Yekta Bey) uses a system of 4 sharps (roughly +25 cents, +75 cents, +125 cents and +175 cents) and 4 flats (roughly -25 cents, -75 cents, -125 cents and -175 cents), none of which correspond to the tempered sharp and flat. They presuppose a Pythagorean division of the octave taking the Pythagorean comma (about an 8th of the tempered tone, actually closer to 24 cents, defined as the difference between 7 octaves and 12 just-intonation fifths) as the basic interval. The Turkish systems have also been adopted by some Arab musicians.

Ben Johnston created a system of notation for pieces in just intonation where the unmarked C, F, and G Major chords are just major chords (4:5:6) and accidentals are used to create just tuning in other keys.

History of notation of accidentals

The three principal symbols indicating whether a note should be raised or lowered in pitch are derived from variations of the letter B: the sharp and natural signs from the square "B quadratum", and the flat sign from the round "B rotundum".

In the early days of European music notation (4-line staff Gregorian chant manuscripts), only the note B could be altered (i.e. have an accidental applied to it): it could be flattened, thus moving from the hexachordum durum (i.e. the hard hexachord: G-A-B-C-D-E) where it is natural, to the hexachordum molle (i.e. the soft hexachord: F-G-A-B♭-C-D) where it is flat; the note B is not present in the third hexachord hexachordum naturale (i.e. the natural hexachord: C-D-E-F-G-A).

This long use of B as the only altered note incidentally helps explain some notational peculiarities:

  • the flat sign actually derives from a round B, signifying the B of the soft hexachord, that is, B flat (hence the name of the flat sign in French "bémol" from medieval French "bé mol" — modern French "bé mou" — or "soft b") and originally meant only B♭;
  • the natural sign derives from a square B, signifying the B of the hard hexachord, that is, B natural (hence the name of the natural sign in French "bécarre" from medieval French "bé carre", earlier "bé quarre" — modern French "bé carré" — or "square b") and originally meant only B natural.

In the same way, in German music notation the letter B designates B flat while the letter H, which is actually a deformation of a square B, designates B natural.

As polyphony became more complex, notes other than B needed to be altered in order to avoid undesirable harmonic or melodic intervals (especially the augmented 4th, or tritone, that music theory writers referred to as "diabolus in musica", i.e. "the devil in music"). The first sharp in use was F♯, then came the second flat E♭, then C♯, G♯, etc.; by the 16th century B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭, G♭ and F♯, C♯, G♯, D♯ and A♯ were all in use to a greater or lesser extent.

However, those accidentals were often not notated in vocal part-books (but the correct pitches were always notated in tablature). The notational practice of not marking implied accidentals, leaving them to be supplied by the performer instead, was called musica ficta (i.e. "feigned music").

See also

  • Sharp, Flat, Natural

External links

  • Tonalsoft Encyclopaedia of Tuning


 

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