Lesson Three: Twelve Tones

“This is an ancient way of teaching, using the simplest language and the situations of everyday life. This means the student should teach himself.” Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

There are twelve tones in music. We will start with five tones on the white keys of the piano, since the black keys (and even some of the white keys) have more than one name. a bit like the characters in a Russian novel.

Notice that the black keys are arranged in groups of two and three. The key directly to the left of the two black keys is C. Although the way music is written is the same throughout much of the world, the keys you play and the notes you read on the page may have different names in different countries: Instead of C,D,E,F,G they may be called Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So, for instance. The advantage of thinking of these five notes as the first, second, third, fourth and fifth degrees of a scale is that it gives us a sense of distance between the notes.

Reading by pattern or interval is the quickest and most accurate way to read music, and it involves more right-brain activity than the old way of thinking letters. Reading patterns also is more likely to produce real phrases than note-note-note playing by letters. However, we need the letters for points of reference so we don’t have to say “the white key to the left of the set of two black keys” every time we mean C.

So put the thumb of your right hand on C, and the adjacent fingers of the right hand on the neighboring keys. If you are still using the virtual keyboard, you will have to use your imagination, since the keys on your monitor will be too small to fit under your fingers.

Play the 1-2-3-4-5 pattern you sang in lesson one and listen carefully to each sound. The fingers of the right hand are numbered 1-2-3-4-5. Now put the little finger of the left hand on the C and play the same pattern. The notes you play will still be C-D-E-F-G, but the finger numbers are mirrors of the right hand finger numbers. The left thumb is finger one, so you will be playing the pattern with fingers 5-4-3-2-1 of the left hand.

If you are feeling bold, you can play “I Know Where I’m Going” , temporarily substituting finger numbers for notes. Don’t forget the rests. And if you want to play along with the cuckoo in the video, the notes he is chirping are C and A.

Lesson Two: The Beat Goes On

Rhythm, phrasing, expression

For lesson two, you need to know how to take your pulse or have access to a clock or timer which ticks.

Try to tap your foot in rhythm to either the ticking clock or to your pulse.

Each tap will be a beat (like a heartbeat).

Then count out loud as you tap:

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

Once you have that down, try counting skipping the second beat:

One () three, four.

One () three, four.

The skipped beats are called rests in music.

Now chant, in time to your tapping foot:

I know where I’m going (rest) (rest)

I know who’s gone with me (rest) (rest)

I know who I love (rest) (rest) (rest)

Who knows who I’ll marry? (rest) (rest)

Each line is a musical phrase.

If you are able to sing your 1-2-3-4-5 from Lesson One, you can add the melody to these words.

1-1-2-3-1-1 (rest two beats)

3-3-4-3-3-2- (rest two beats)

5-5-5-5-1- (rest three beats)

2-3-4-3-3-2 (rest two beats and repeat)

What is the mood of the lyric? If it seems happy to you, you may speak or sing it faster (if you’re still singing with your pulse, your pulse will speed up.) If you’re singing with the clock, you may have to step away so that the clock doesn’t slow you down to its speed or tempo.

If the lyric seems sad, you might want to speak or sing it more slowly.

Rhythm in music is more physical than mental, which is why you need to teach yourself to tap your foot in time with the beat or on the beat. All rhythm in music is beats, whether extended (as lasting more than one beat), divided (more than one sound to a beat) or silent.

For Lesson 3, you will need a keyboard. A toy piano or electronic keyboard will do, or you can start out with the virtual keyboard at http://play-piano.org/play_online_piano_piano.html. For now, please ignore the letters and just experiment with high notes (to your right) and low notes (to your left).

Vocabulary, Lesson Two:

Rhythm: Musical time

Beat: A unit of musical time

Rest: A silence in musical time

Phrase: A musical idea

Lyric: The words to a song.

Tempo: The rate of musical time (fast or slow)

Oliver Sachs and me

Oliver Sachs, in his book Musicophilia, says that the love of music is universal among human beings, that "it lies so deep in human nature that one must think of it as innate". Citing "biophilia" or the love of living things, Sachs says "Perhaps musicophilia is a form of biophilia, since music itself feels almost like a living thing."

I have always thought of music as a living, organic entity common to all of us. I have taught thousands of piano students and have never encountered one who could not learn to play, though I have encountered many who THOUGHT they could not play (or sing, or write, or draw), no matter what difficulty they had to overcome. Dyslexia, for instance, makes reading music harder but not impossible.

The psychological, emotional and even physical benefits of playing an instrument are well documented, so I won't dwell on them. But I will tell you a bit about myself: I am a member of Music Teachers National Association and of California Association of Professional Music Teachers, with state and national certification. I have a California credential in piano. I am an emerita of Skyline College's music department and still play with a community orchestra and chorus.

Organic Piano

Lesson One: Listening and Pitch

“I wish I could play the piano.”

I’ve heard this a thousand times.

I am here to grant your wish. We will start at the very beginning, and we’ll go as far as we can. I believe that everyone has music inside them. Making music is very different from just listening to music, though of course you listen to the music you make.

So the first thing to do is to listen: Listen to the doorbell, your car horn, sounds in nature. Listen to the pitches of a telephone number on your phone. The numbers go by very rapidly if you are phoning someone, but there are only three different sounds, four if you count the dial tone. Can you sing the sound of the dial tone? This is called matching the pitch. Pitch is the highness or lowness of the sound. Some people say they are tone-deaf, but in the many years I have taught piano I have never found anyone who was tone deaf.

A foghorn usually has a low pitch. Most bird sounds involve high pitches. Sirens move up and down from pitch to pitch. As a train moves away from you, the pitch of its horn will seem to grow lower.

Can you sing a tune? (You don’t have to do it out loud.)

You may have a musical gift, or you may have an ear which yearns to be educated. One way to find out is to listen and try to imitate.

If you can sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, you can do the first exercise. You won’t need a keyboard until Lesson 2, and then I’ll give you a link to a virtual keyboard to start with. If you are a monotone, we will teach your ear as we go along. If you can already sing, notice the following:

“Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream”

This tune uses five different sounds. The first three sounds are the same. You might think of them as Sound One.

“your” uses a higher sound, Sound Two.

“boat” uses a higher sound, Sound Three.

So if we use numbers for the first part of the song, they would be

1-1-1-2-3

3-2-3-4-5.

Now, if you are able, sing 1-2-3-4-5.

This is a pentachord and it is the basis for so much music that once you learn it, you can learn to read and play music on the piano or any other instrument. And that is where we’re headed.

Vocabulary, Lesson One:

Pitch: The highness or lowness of sound, caused by the rate of vibration.

Tone-deaf: Unable to differentiate different pitches

Keyboard: the black and white keys of a piano, electronic keyboard, organ, etc. Monotone: same as tone-deaf

Pentachord.: five consecutive notes, the first five notes of a scale