 In linear theory, lesson one, we will be really reviewing the staff, we'll be reviewing what notes look like on the staff and definitely note names as well. So let's get started. Pitches or tones are named with letters and for everything that we're doing, for the names of notes in music, we start at the letter A and we go to letter G and then start back over again at A. So Pitches names would be A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and then starting over again at A. A staff consists of five horizontal lines and there's four spaces between those lines and you can see that staff on the screen in front of you right now. The treble clef, the one on top, is used to indicate pitches that are high in pitch or another way to think of it is it indicates pitches that are in the female range of voice. So higher pitches. The bass clef, the one on the bottom, is used to indicate pitches found more in the male voice range. So think lower pitches. The lines and spaces of the staff are used to indicate various specific pitches. Now I have indicated over on the left hand side, I have indicated the names of the lines in the treble and bass clef. You'll notice on the treble clef side that the lowest line is E, that's this one right here. So if we were to see a note right there, that would be the note E. The next line above that is a G, the next line above that B, D, and F. Now the notes that fall in the spaces between would be F, A, C, and E. On the bass clef, the bottom line is a G, the next is B, D, F, and A. The spaces in the bass clef are A, C, E, and G. Now you're going to notice over here that I have placed in the bass clef, I've placed the F in red and italicized. That's because a lot of times people will refer to the bass clef as the F clef and it's a good way to remember that F line right here as being the note F. You'll notice also these two circles are around the dots and those dots, or excuse me, the two circles are above and below the F line. So some people will think of the bass clef as the F clef. Similarly, up here in the treble clef, I have the G in red and italicized and that's to let you know that sometimes people think of the treble clef as the G clef and just another way to remember that second line up is G and you'll notice that the symbol sort of circles around the G line. So that's the way I learned as a kid. G clef is the treble clef and F clef is the bass clef. Now if we have a line that's significantly, or excuse me, a note that's significantly above the staff, I took you up as far as the F right here. This note would be G, this note would be the note A and you'll notice that I drew the note and then I drew the line through the note that would be there if the staff extended. That's known as a ledger line. That would be a B, that would be a C and so on. So these are called ledger lines. They go above and below the staff. We could do the same thing here. That's an F, that's an E, D, C, etc. Can keep using those ledger lines as far as we want to go. When we see this staff together, it's called a grand staff. It's also typically what you see when you play piano. A grand staff has the treble and the bass clef both together. Now let's move to a graphic of a piano keyboard and talk a little bit about how these relate to the keyboard on the piano. Now for those of you that are taking guitar lessons, you're still going to need to understand the names of the notes on the piano and how to count whole steps and half steps on the piano. So let me give you just a quick introduction to piano keyboard note names. You'll notice that the black keys on the piano fall into a pattern of two black keys, then three, then two, then three, then two, and that pattern continues all the way up and down the keyboard. So now the way I usually teach beginning students to remember the keyboard note names is this. I have a little rhyme that goes this way. It goes D dumb diddle, D is in the middle right between the two black keys. So we find the two black keys and we know that the white key right in between those black keys is always a D. Even from there we can use our alphabet D, E, F, G and then we start back over at A, B, C and there's D. D dumb diddle, D is in the middle right between the two black keys. So it's a good way to remember the note names and the names of the keys of a piano. Now the next thing we have are two vocabulary words and the first is that of a half step and a half step is the distance from any key to the next adjacent key. So if we're here on this G then a half step would be the black key above or the black key below would be a half step. If we're here on this key then a half step would be to this key. So from this B to this C is a half step. The next vocabulary word we have is a whole step. Now a whole step by definition is two half steps. So a whole step would be let's say from this F that would be a half step and that's another half step so from there to there is a whole step. Two half steps equals a whole step. If we were on this E and we go there that's one half step and then we go up here that's another half step so the distance from here to it's tough for you to see here I'll do that one in red to there is a whole step. Finally we want to define and identify sharps. If you ever see a sharp on a note that indicates that that note is one half step higher. So if this note is C a C sharp would be found right here. One half step higher than C. If we're on the note G a G sharp would be found one half step higher than the G. Next we have a flat and a flat is used to indicate a note a half step lower. So if this is G then G flat would be found right there. Now a couple of things that you do need to know and that is let's say we have the note C right here then C flat might be found right there. Now you can tell also that that note is named B. The name for two notes or one note that has two different names is N harmonic. So if we have N harmonic tones they would be a tone that has two different names. A good example would be C flat and B. Another example of that might be F sharp or G flat. You'll notice that if the F is sharp it's there and if the G is flat it's there. So that black key has two different names F sharp or G flat those are N harmonic names. At this point you know you have all the information that you really need to do this theory assignment. If you look at your assignment you will see that part one just simply asks you to write the correct letter name of each pitch. Part two is really fill in the blanks and you can do that using the information in lesson one. And finally look very closely at part three's directions. It gives you the note. It gives you an arrow up or down and it asks you to place a sharp or flat sign next to the note to designate the pitch half step higher or half step lower as indicated by the arrows. But here's where a lot of kids make a mistake. It then asks you to write and name the N harmonic pitch. So if you were to write and name the N harmonic pitch let me just give you this the first one I believe is in bass clef and it gives you the note B and below that there's an arrow down and a line. So the arrow down tells you that you want to make it a half step lower that would be B flat and on the line you don't write B flat you write the N harmonic pitch and if you go back to this and you find your note B and you go to B flat there's B flat and you'll see that the N harmonic pitch is a sharp. So the correct answer here is a sharp. So that's how you would answer the first one in part three of linear pitch lesson one assignment one. Okay go to work and good luck with this assignment. See me if you have any questions.