Or at the end of a song, to further express emotion. “Ad-libs” in modern genre songs are usually quite simple, using blues links and/or rhythmic patterns. “Improvising” is what jazz, rock, blues and, sometimes, folk musicians do when they, essentially, play around with the chords of the whole tune, making up new melody lines, riffs and rhythmic ideas using the harmony of the whole song. So it’s much more complex than ad-libbing, where one is usually only improvising over a few bars here and there. We’re going to be mainly looking at ad-libbing in this article, touching briefly on improvising at the end of the article.

“Why bother?” you might ask, and rightly so. The reason why it’s worth a little work is that having a basic knowledge of music and rhythm can free you up enormously and help you find your own voice. It can be done by ear, but if you want to get a sense of freedom into your performance then a certain amount of basic knowledge is paramount. You’re no longer rigidly sticking to the tune, you can hear what the other musicians are doing and are part of the whole picture, rather than the lone voice out at the front of the stage. This opens up enormous opportunities for you, the singer, and the choices you can make within the song. Even if you choose to simply stick to the tune, your phrasing will be more finely tuned and subtle. And even if an audience doesn’t know what you’re doing, they’ll feel and hear it.

You can learn to do it all by ear, but if you don’t know where to start and it’s all a complete mystery, you can train your ear by listening to the chords and practicing syncopation, i.e. rhythm. If the latter is the case, then I suggest you check out the articles “How Music Is Constructed“, “How To Read Music” and “How To Feel Rhythm” before reading this article.
If you do have a basic knowledge of music, then read on:

Starting To Ad-Lib
We’ve looked at chords, scales and rhythm, from bars to Breves to semi-quavers in the first two articles mentioned above. We looked at syncopation in the “How To Feel Rhythm” article. Now let’s look at using rhythm, using the chords of a song, to create a solo. I”m going to take the last few bars of the “Amazing Grace” verse used in the Chapter “How to Sing A Song, Putting It All Together” lesson of the online tutorials:
singingfromthecenter.com/fullprogram
The last few bars are a particularly dramatic part of the song, and so present a great opportunity to ad-lib:
end-of-amazing-grace

The grids above the sheet music are guitar tablature showing the chords and fingering for guitarists.
There’s now a Bb7 chord in the arrangement, which opens up new harmonic possibilities.
In fact, using these 4 bars and 2 chords, we can learn the basics of ad-libbing and improvising.
The first step is to recognize the chords and be able to sing them, scales and arpeggios, until you can do so from memory:
Key of Eb:

Hear Eb scale
And Bb7:

Hear Bb7 scale
And how they work in the song:
end-of-amazing-grace
The next step is to sing arpeggios (up and down an octave in intervals) to the scales:

Hear Eb arpeggio
The arpeggio is playing the 1st, 3rd, 5th, octave, 5th, 3rd and 1st (root).

Hear Bb7 arpeggio
The arpeggio is playing the root, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 5th, 3rd, root of the chord.
Here are a couple of examples of how arpeggios can be used:

Arpeggio

Arpeggio 2
A simple arpeggio, combined with the from the chords of the song creates another little tune.
Once you feel you have the scales and arpeggios pretty much down, the next step is to start singing little tunes and riffs made up of scales and arpeggios, but combining them rhythmically to make it more interesting (there’s a quaver pick-up into the first beat of the bar to the lyric ‘was blind…’ in this version):
end-of-amazing-grace-2
If you’re finding the time difficult, then here’s the click track version:
end-of-amazing-grace
Try clapping a few rhythms, as in the ‘How To Feel Rhythm‘ article.
If you’ve a piano or guitar to practice with, then you can obviously also play the notes of the chords and sing them as in the examples above.
The ear is a muscle just as the voice is, so repetition in this way helps you recognize the shape of a chord and where the key notes are within that chord. You’re ear then hears the color of the chord.
The trick is to also use the feel of the song when ad-libbing. Amazing Grace is very much a Gospel tune, and so it lends itself to blues licks, and the blues scale.
Notice that a simple B7 chord is akin to the Mixolydian mode, and so works with the blues scale, since one is essentially flattening the seventh (as in the Bb7 scale MP3 above).
It’s the the 7th of the B7 chord gives these few chords their “blues-ey” flavor. So the chords” arpeggios need to reflect this, in other words, using the Ab, which is the 7th of the B7 chord:
Hear B7 arpeggio with 7th accented
Sing along with the instrumental track below and try to pick out the arpeggio, accenting the 7th:
B7-chord-repeated
Now try making up a tune using the track above, and see if you can pick out the 7th.
Then try doing the same thing with the root, 3rd and 5th (using the Bb7 arpeggio MP3 for reference).
Then, once again, try making up little tunes over the chord, and see if further recognizing the different notes of the chord has made a difference.
Now try doing the same thing with the chord of Eb, using the Eb arpeggio above for reference:
Eb-chord-repeated
The next step is to try doing the same thing with the actual tune:
end-of-amazing-grace
end-of-amazing-grace-2
Here are a couple of ad-libs using track 1 above, which is also from the full program lesson “How to Sing A Song, Putting It All Together”. The first two are Gospel’ey and the last one Folk-ey:
ad-libbing-amazing-grace-1
ad-libbing-amazing-grace-2
folk-ad-libbing-amazing-grace
So, lots of possibilities, using just two chords at the end of a verse. By making up little tunes, we’re essentially inventing/using “riffs” and “licks”, like putting together the parts of a puzzle. And, by now, you should be able to hear the chords that the ad-libs above are using: Eb, B7, Eb.
As I mentioned above, with modern genre music most improvised licks use the blues, the blues scale and mixolydian mode (as in the B7 chord), i.e. nothing too fancy. In fact, it often sounds unnecessary when you make the improvising too complicated, since most modern genre music is about telling the story in the clearest, most direct and emotional way.
However, by the same token there’s no point in just singing any old thing. Ad-libs need to fit the feel of the song and lyric, within the context of the whole song. Usually at a pertinent point in the performance, helping the song build in intensity. The licks above would have more impact at the end of the song, but since we’re only using the first verse in this instance, licks at the end of the first verse it is!
Rhythm
As I also mentioned earlier, the rhythm, of a song is just as important as the notes you’re singing. And the same holds true with improvising. Where you start in the bar changes the feel of the ad-lib, for example.
The first two ad-libs above start on the ‘and’ after the 2nd beat of the bar, the last example on the 1st beat of the bar. Notice that the last example sounds “straighter”. Generally, if you start an ad-libbed phrase on the second beat of the bar, or on the pickup (’1 and 2 and 3 and’ for example), it will have more weight and color.
Try singing a few phrases and clapping along at the same time to the track below, i.e. sing the phrases you’re clapping. There are a few examples in the ‘How To Feel Rhythm’ article if you’re stuck, and here are a couple of clapping examples from the same article (using the instrumental soul version below) that might be useful for reference:
Example-of-rhythm-improvisation
Example-of-rhythm-improvisation-harder
amazing-grace-soul-instrumental.mp3
Or clap the phrases that you’re singing to the Amazing Grace first verse instrumental tracks:
amazing-grace-Instrumental
end-of-amazing-grace-Instrumental
Putting It All Together
Learning to ad-lib is like learning a new language, or putting the pieces of a puzzle together. Mathematical, yet rooted in the emotion of the song.
You can obviously take this further, and approach any song, or part of a song, in the same way:
1. Learning to recognize and hear the chords by singing scales and arpeggios, then playing around with the rhythm making up little licks and riffs.
2. Then starting to recognize other chords until you feel just as comfortable with a sus 4 as with a major chord, for example (the next step from is to study scales and the chords relative to them, which takes you into the realm of the Jazz musician).
4. If you’re ad-libbing, try making up some phrases using the lyric, or just part of the melody, or a combination of the two.
And lastly but never leastly, trust your instinct and try not to judge your performance.
A Few Amazing Grace Versions
Ad-libbing and improvising can help tremendously when tackling different genres, all of which demand a different approach and technique, and often sense of time (are you behind, ahead or right on the beat?).
When a song is a classic, such as Amazing Grace, it can lend itself to changing the feel and often the chords to create completely different versions of the same tune.
So for these purposes, here’s a soul, jazz, folk and country version. I’ll also be using these versions to explain the sheet music, i.e. how the music is notated, and how the chords have often been changed to give a different color and/or feel to the tune.
(Many thanks to pianist/composer/arranger Terry Disley for arranging and playing these Amazing Grace versions: terrydisley.com).
Soul Version:
amazing-grace-soul-version

Soul – a step away from Gospel, still rooted very much in the blues. Looking at the sheet music above, we can see that it’s in 4/4 rather than the traditional 3/4 time. The accent of the track is on the 2 and 4 (the tambourine and hand claps), and the vocal veers away from the traditional timing of the tune, making it a kind of ad-lib in itself.
You also might notice all of the music in these versions is written out in longhand. If you’re performing an arrangement of a song, then unless you have a music program that prints out the music (Sibelius, or one of the many music software programs will also often do this: Cubase, Sonar, Logic and Digital Performer being a few of the professional level programs), then an arrangement is often written out in this way – in this case by musician/composer/arranger Terry Disley.
This is a three stave arrangement, with the vocal being the top line, the piano the middle and the bass the bottom. Once again, the time signature and key (Eb, 3 flats) on the left hand side of the page. Notice that the piano and bass are grouped together, also on the left hand side of the page, to distinguish the difference between the lead line, i.e. the voice, and the instrumentation.?The opening motif is shown by way of the syncopated rhythm of the piano and bass working together. The bass is bringing in the feel of the tune as a pick-up into the first bar. The slur on this pick-up means “legato”, i.e. a “smooth” feel, as in the opposite of “staccato”.
This is a different kind of slur than the one on the 5th bar of the vocal stave (the bar at letter “A”). This slur joins three notes together as one, to make a triplet. I mentioned triplets in the “How to Read Music” article, and here is one, alive and kicking.
The Eb before the crotchet is a semi-breve with a dot. A dot meaning “half as much again”, and a semi-breve being two beats, this makes this note three beats long. The triplet after this is thus a beat long, i.e. a crotchet, to make up the 4/4 time. To count a crotchet triplet: hold your finger in the air and describe going down and back up. The first count at the top, the second the bottom, and back up to the top. One, two three.
You can also see accents (second bar), ties (second bar again, for example), rests (4 bar rest on the lead line at the beginning), crotchet rests starting on the second bar (the first bar being after the pickup. The crotchet rest is the squiggly line) and an example of a quaver rest on the 5th bar in the piano stave. This would be counted “one, two, and three four”, the “and” being the rest.
The forward looking slash in the piano part is not a rest, but means ” play the same chord for these amounts of beats”. So, for example, in bar 13, Bb-7 to A7b5, it means two beats of each chord.
We also get to change the note within the key. Right at the beginning of the tune, on the bass pickup are the notes: G, Ab and A. Ab is in the key of Eb, but not the A. So the “hash” looking sign means “raise the note a half tone and play an A, not an Ab”. The slate is wiped clean at the beginning of the next bar, which is why the same sign pops up again on the 6th bar, to once again un-flatten the A.
“Sim”, on bar 7, means “similar”.
The chords of the song have also been changed, lending a different color and flavor to the song and giving it a bit more depth. I’ll explain the harmonies in the next section of the article, the Jazz version.
As far as being a singer and working with a chart (sheet music), an accompanist and an arrangement, the first thing to notice is the feel of the song. This feel is very syncopated, with the accents on “1 and 3″, i.e. the first and third beats of the bar. This means that your phrasing needs to work with and reflect this. Once again, it can help to think ” one and two and three and four” etc. In other words, it”s in 4, but if you feel it in 8, then the rhythm will feel easier and your phrasing will have more subtlety.
Jazz
amazing-grace-jazz

This Jazz version is played in a classic ballad style, with both the bass and piano accenting the ¾ time. Yet again, think “one and two and three and” for the feel and time.
Since this is a Jazz version, and Jazz is music based on improvising, it’s now time to look at the chords in more detail, and also how one might improvise or ad-lib using the chord voicings above (a chord voicing meaning exactly that, like the different voices in a choir. Chords are traditionally “voiced” from the root up: root, 3rd, 5th and onwards depending on the chord).
The version above is in the original key of Eb, but I found that both the Jazz and Folk versions sounded better in a lower key, so I chose C for the Jazz version and Db for the Folk version. For simplicity’s sake we’ll be looking at both versions in C, the median key since Db, having 5 flats, makes things very complicated. The Jazz version in C is shown after this next section.
Transposing A Song
So let’s say you have the music for a song that works for you, and need to transpose it into a key that’s in your vocal range. Taking the example above, we need to transpose the song from the key of Eb to C. On a keyboard or guitar, simply count down (or up, whichever is simpler, i.e. nearer the key you’re transposing to) the number of semitones to your destination. Eb to C is 4 half-tones, or semitones, including Eb:

Transposing Eb to C becomes:
Eb – C?D – B?Db – Bb?C – A?B – Ab?Bb – G?A – F#?Ab – F?G – E?F# – Eb?F – D?E – Db?And back to Eb.
And so we get the new key.
The Chord Voicings

The sheet music above, in the key of C, is in ¾ time and has a four bar intro, the basic notes of the motif written out for piano and bass. The letter “A” in this case, is the where the voice comes in. In this instance, having a letter A is useful during rehearsal or performance. Saying “Ok, let’s pick it up at letter “A”, for example, saves a lot of time and explanation.
We’ve already looked at the major and minor chords, the 7th’s and a few other chord possibilities in the articles ‘How Music Is Constructed‘ and ‘How To Read Music‘. There are a few chord possibilities in the Jazz version that were only mentioned in passing in those articles, however:
The first chord is C over G, which is the second inversion of a C major chord. A chords inversion relates first of all to its bass note. C major triad contains the tones C, E and G; its inversion is determined by which of these tones is used as the bottom note in the chord. And so each bass note used indicates the identity of the chord:

Root Position: When the root’s in the bass.
After this, the different positions of the bass are called inversions.
The first inversion of the C major triad is E – the third of the triad – with the fifth and the root, C, stacked above it:
In the second inversion, i.e. the first chord in the Jazz version, the bass is G, the 5th of the triad, with the root and the 3rd above it. Thus forming a 4th and a 6th above the (inverted) bass of G. A second-inversion triad is also known as a ’6 4′ chord and would be written as C/G:

Third inversions exist only for chords of four or more tones, such as 7th chords. In a third-inversion chord, the 7th of the chord is in the bass position. For example, a C7 chord in third inversion consists of Bb in the bass position (the 7th), with C, E and G above it, and would be written as C/Bb:

And on to the next chord, G13. Simply put, this means “use the 13th in the chord”. If you count “G” as 8 (i.e. you’ve already counted up a major octave), then continue till you get to the 13th note, which in this case is an E:

In effect this is the 6th note of a G scale. So the:
9th is the same as the 2nd, the
11th the same as the 4th and the
13th equivalent to the 6th.
By using what’s commonly called the “upper part of the chord”, this then gives the color of the chord dimension and subtlety, and is known as an extended chord. It’s also useful to remember that if you have a musician who knows his or her stuff playing with you, they might well do this automatically, and hopefully with a certain amount of taste (less always being more). When the sheet music states something as specific as a G13 chord however, they’ll know that this actual voicing is paramount.
And on to F minor, the 4th note in the key of C, and also part of the cycle of 5ths (one, four, five as it’s most commonly notated, C to F to Bb). A simple F minor isn’t indicating a 7th but is just flattening the 3rd, a nice contrast to the subtlety of the 13th chord before it.
C to G7. The line in between the two chords meaning: 2 beats of C, 2 beats of G7. The G7 meaning “a G major chord with a minor 7th”, and F. A major 7 being the F#.
To C. Enough said.
Then C to F7b5. The F chord is like a half-diminished chord, but has a major rather than a minor 3rd:

To F major 7. This uses the major rather than the minor 7th, E rather than Eb.
C over E, the first inversion of a C major chord:

Hear the bars above
We now get into modes. By using E as the bass note, it’s suggesting the scale of E. But by using C, E and G, the upper part of this voicing, we’re essentially flattening the 3rd, 6th and 7th of the chord. This is the same as the Aeolian Mode (once again, modes are briefly mentioned in the article “How To Read Music”).
A minor. Nuff said.
D9, another extended chord. A 9th chord typically includes the 7th and a major triad structure:

Hear the D9 chord above
F over G:

Hear F over G
Since G isn’t in the triad of F, this isn’t a chord inversion. The 7th of a straight F chord is played by the G in the bass, the 7th, 9th and 4th voiced by the F triad in the treble clef, making this a specific way to voice an F7 chord.
G7. A major chord that includes the minor 7th.
A-7. A minor chord that includes the minor 7.
G minor 7 to F#7b5. Same as the F7b5 but a semitone down.
Country Version
amazing-grace-country

Above is the Country version in Eb. As I mentioned earlier this version worked better in a lower key, so here it is in C for easy reference:

Traditional American Country music’s roots go back all the way to the early settlers. To the Folk, Celtic and “old time” music of the Irish, British, Scottish and Dutch peoples, originally centered in the Southern United States and the Appalachian Mountains. From there it was influenced by Gospel music and the blues, and because it was the main form of music played at dances and the like (think of Irish jigs and Scottish reels), the rhythm is highly accented (a one and a two and a three and a four and a etc). The same applies with this recorded version, i.e. once again it can help to think “One and a two and a three and a four” to get the feel of the rhythm. You can see this reflected in the bass line, which is notated as a simple two notes to a bar rhythm, i.e. 2 minims to a bar. You can hear that the guitar in the recording is further helping the groove by marking straight 4/4 time. With the feel clearly stated by the guitar and bass, the piano is free to be more expressive and help the track breathe. The chords are a bit straighter than the soul version, the only out of the ordinary chord being Eb/Bb, the second inversion of Eb (as in the inversions of the Jazz version above).
Nothing new the rest of the chart except the ‘repeat’ sign at letter A and the end of the piece.
Folk Version
amazing-grace-folk

For folk, in this instance, think “old school and straight forward”. The only difference in this sheet music is the tie on the lead line (i.e. vocal) in the last two bars. A dotted minim makes the count 3 (a minim being two counts, the dots half as much again), so with the tie the total count is 6.
In Conclusion
So we’ve looked a the basics of ad-libbing and improvising: what it is and some simple ideas on how to develop these skills.
And we’ve seen how, by changing the chords and the feel, we get very different interpretations of the same song in a completely different genre.
And from practicing the exercises above and the information from the articles: ‘How Music Is Constructed’, ‘How To Feel Rhythm’ and ‘How To Read Music’, you hopefully now have a deeper understanding of:
1. What the other musicians are playing: how the music is constructed – the chords etc.
2. The rhythm. And as we saw earlier, when you have good rhythm you’re then free to play with phrasing and timing, and you always know your place in the music (how the tune fits in with the chords, where you are in the arrangement at any given time).
3. How to approach improvising, and so free up your performance, so you’re not ‘stuck’ always singing the same thing in exactly the same way.
And as I mentioned earlier, how we sing the song also depends on many things: the genre, the tempo, the feel etc. We saw how, in the Soul version of Amazing Grace, the chords leant themselves to a more Gospel, blues-y interpretation, using chest and diaphragm together, with the resonance opened up to the chest. The folk version was very ‘straight’ and the country version accenting the 2 and 4 of the bar to give the vocal swing, the tone a purer one than the Jazz and soul versions.
All of the chords in these versions were subtly changed, but the most radical differences were in the Jazz version. You can hear the difference in the harmony and chord voicings, and the wealth of possibilities this opens up for all concerned. The singer can potentially make more elegant choices, although in this instance I mostly stuck to the tune but changed the phrasing – once again, I felt, less being more. With subtler chords, when it’s time for a musician’s solo, there’s a suggestion of harmonic content much richer than the other, simpler versions. Once again, appropriate to the genre. The tone was a mixture of breathy and clear note, with a lot of communication between with the larynx and diaphragm.
Improvising
A quick re-cap:
1. Get to recognize the chords, so you can hear them coming up and recognize the difference between them.
2. Sing scales and arpeggios around the chords, to get them fixed in your head.
3. Learn some licks and riffs that fit over the chords.
4. If there’s an unusual chord that your ear is finding it difficult to hear, for example the F7b5 in the Jazz version, make up some little tunes over the chord to help you recognize it.
This may seem like gruntwork, but your ear is a muscle just as your voice is, and the subconscious a powerful tool. Once the ear has recognized the chords and has some ideas how to use them with rhythm and pitch, hey ho you’re improvising.
A good jazz musician, or a musician that’s interested in improvising, learns the intricacies of scales, and how they relate to various chords. So in effect they understand not only all of the different chords and chords voicings, but also modes, and have an extensive knowledge of how to use different scales over various chords and their voicings. Because as a tune progresses, there’s usually a harmonic flow and structure. For example chords resolving, as we saw earlier with the II V I progression. There’s a natural logic to the whole process. And in this way, as mentioned earlier, learning to improvise is akin to learning another language: everyone in the band playing with rhythm and harmony using the song as a vehicle to do so. And hopefully all at the same time or at least in the same room.

I mention in that article how mathematical music is, and musical notation (for example, sheet music) is no exception. Everything is split up into parts and segments, starting with the whole form of a song, right down to the millisendth of a note, and vice versa. When you understand the form, and how each increment of that form is broken down, i.e. notated, then reading music is relatively easy.

3 Octaves C To C

With sheet music, a three octave scale in C would be written like this:

Low C to High C Scale

If we think in terms of a piano keyboard, middle C is the note in red. Anything below that is part of the “bass clef”, the curly sign on the bottom left of the diagram. Anything above that is the “treble clef”, and is described by the sign on the top left hand side of the music. The time signature is also shown on the left hand side of the music, in this case 4/4 time, the most common of time signatures. A bar means a whole section of that time signature, i.e. four beats. The horizontal groups of lines in the diagram that make up both the treble and the bass clef are called “staves”. There are 5 lines grouped together in a stave.

In the sheet music above, the staves are broken down into 6 blocks by vertical lines. Each block is called a bar, and denotes 4 beats, thus creating the 4/4 time signature indicated at the beginning of the music. The musical notes are then notated in time the with beat of the music, and thus the pacing of the bars.

Notes can be placed on a bar in the white spaces, or on the black lines, each line of the stave representing a note on the scale.

For the black notes E G B D F I learnt this rhyme as a child:

“Every Good Boy Deserves Favor”

And for the white notes it was F.A.C.E:

“F.A.C.E.”, face.

Notes

The notes in the music above are “crotchets”, meaning a single beat, and in 4/4 time, there would be 4 crotchets to a bar, making four single beats, 1,2,3,4. Once again, music being mathematical, a single bar can be split into further increments. We start with a Breve, often called a double whole note in American and German terminology. One note, 8 beats. It’s either shown over two bars (yet again, in 4/4 time):

Hear A breve

Or notated like this:

The diagram on the left hand side shows a hollow oval note head, like a whole note, with one or two vertical lines on either side. An alternative notation consists of two adjacent hollow oval note heads, as in the double noted bar on the right .

SemiBreve

Once again sometimes called a whole note in American and German terminology.

A semibreve is 4 counts long. So in 4/4 time, a semibreve would look like this:

Hear A semibreve

A Minim

A minim is two beats, the above diagram showing 2 minims in a 4/4 bar.

Hear A Minim

A Crotchet.

Four beats to the bar.

4-Crotchets

A Quaver

8 beats to the bar.

Hear the bar above

Quavers can also be split up into increments. So two quavers look like this:

Hear the bar above

A single quaver is notated like this:

The stem can be drawn facing up or down, shown by the flag on the right hand side of the note, depending on the path of the music.

Double this time are semiquavers, 16 beats to a bar:

Hear the bar above

The double line at the top shows it’s a semiquaver.

A single semiquaver looks like this:

The squiggly line after the notes in this diagram in a semiquaver rest (see below).

To a demisemiquaver, 32 beats to the bar, which is just getting silly:

Rests

If there’s a space in the music, or rest, this is shown as:

A whole bar:

This bar rest also translates as a two bar rest, when it’s shown, for example, after a semibreve:

The single bar rest (squiggly sign), meaning one beat:

The above 4/4 bar shows a crotchet, a crotchet rest and a two bar rest.

A quaver rest looks like this:

And a semiquaver rest has a double tail on it, shown after the two semiquavers:

And a demisemiquaver rest looks like this:

Keys

OK, so that’s the basic notes and rests, and how they’re shown on the stave. Now let’s look at keys, i.e. what they are and how to recognize them. I mentioned keys, scales and chords in the “How Music Is Constructed” article. Every song has a key (with only rare exceptions, for example, free Jazz). The key of a piece of music can be a complicated subject. But, in a broad sense, it means that the note the key pertains to is the song’s harmonic center, or tonic. In other words, if the song was in C for example, you could play the note of C more or less throughout the piece as a bass note and hear the key (see the section ‘Finding a song’s key’ for more info).

Music is also generally written in either a major or a minor key. The major or minor depends on the scale on which the key is based. The key of a song is shown at the left hand side of the stave.

The Key of C looks like the very first scale above, with nothing on the left hand side of the stave, having no sharps or flats. “C” is also sometimes written to denote the key.

The Flat Keys

F : 1 flat, Bb:

Bb: 2 flats. Bb and Eb:

Eb: 3 flats. Ab, Eb and Bb:

Ab: 4 flats. Ab, Bb, Db, Eb:

Db: 5 flats. Db, Eb, Gb, Ab, Bb:

Gb: 6 flats. Gb, Ab, Bb, Cb, Db, Eb:

Cb: 7 flats. Fb, Gb, Ab, Bb, Cb, Db, Eb:

By the time you get to Db, it’s getting ridiculous. 5 flats and above make these keys really hard to play for any musician. By just changing the key to either C or D, a simple half step in either direction (whichever is most comfortable for you, the singer), you’re making everyone’s life much easier.

The Sharp Keys

G: 1 sharp. F:

D: 2 sharps. F and C:

A: 3 sharps. F, C and G:

E: 4 sharps. F, C, G and D:

B: 5 sharps. F, C, G, D and A:

F#: 6 sharps. F, C, G, D, A and E:

C#: 7 sharps. F, C, G, D, A, E and B:

The same applies as above. From B onwards, these are pretty redundant keys.

Minor Keys

I mentioned relative minor keys in the article “How Music Is Constructed“, and how they relate to the cycle of 5ths:

A minor key has a flattened 3rd, 6th and 7th note. Each minor key is related to a major key with the same amount of sharps or flats.

So, looking at the diagram, it shows that the key of C is related to A minor. The key of C has no sharps or flats:

and neither does the key of A minor:

And so on round the cycle: the relative minor of G is D minor, D is B minor etc.

Finding A Song’s Key

If you have sheet music that doesn’t have a key written in the left hand corner, you can find the key in a number of ways:

1. It’s quite often the first or last chord, or else the chord the first chord resolves to.
2. It’s the predominant bass note (if the key is F, for example, you can pretty much keep playing an F in the bass and it’ll sound right).
3. If you have a keyboard or guitar, then if you can pick out chords it becomes much simpler. You’ll see certain chords repeating themselves. If the key is G, for example, you’ll find yourself playing the F# again and again. A big sign that the key is G.

Half Tones, or Semitones

What about half notes, or semitones, i.e. the equivalent of a white to a black know on the piano? This is notated by sharps and flats:

The diagram and the sheet music above show F to F#, a semitone.

Playing up octave using every note, i.e. every semitone, is called a “chromatic scale”.

Sharpening And Flattening Notes

If you want to write a note that’s not in the key of the piece, for example a semitone higher or lower than the current note you’re playing or singing, then this is notated by a flat or sharp sign before the note.

Hear The Bar Above

Once you’ve assigned the command to the music with a raised or sharpened sign, it’ll keep being played as such until you tell the music to do otherwise. So if you want to go back to the original note that fits in with the key of the song, then the opposite sign is used to once more raise or lower the note a semitone. This snippet is in the key of C. F is sharpened to F sharp, and then flattened back to F.

Dots

Hear the bar above

In the example above, there’s a dot after the crotchet, the first note. A dot after any note means “half as much again”. This makes the count of the dotted crotchet 1 1/2 beats, the quaver (half a beat) completing the first half of the bar, i.e. 2 beats, and a 2 bar rest completing the 4/4 bar.

The dotted minim 3 beats, the crotchet 1.

Ties

Ties work in 2 ways. They either simply tie the note together, as in the bar below:

Hear the bar above

A dotted crotchet (1 1/2 beats) a tied crotchet (1 1/2 beats), a quaver rest and a quaver for the first bar, with a semibreve the next bar.

The second crotchet is tied because it’s in effect tied to the 2nd half of the bar. The first dotted crotchet and quaver being the first two counts, the crotchet, rest and quaver making up the 2nd 2 counts.

Hear the bar above

A tied, dotted minim make up the two bars above. When a note is tied it means: play it once, for the duration specified. In this case across one bar into the next. The note above is 5 counts (the first minim being 2 counts, the next dotted minim, 3 counts).

Syncopation

“Dots” and ties create syncopation – changing the length of notes so they’re no longer regimented, i.e. strictly in time. Mixing up the length of the notes creates rhythm, and as soon as rhythm is introduced into a song, it becomes syncopated.

The examples used in the ‘Dots’ and ‘Ties’ sections above demonstrates this.

When thinking of the rhythm of a song, for example 4/4 time, it can help to count in quavers: one and two and three and four and etc.

For more on syncopation, check out the article: ‘How To Feel Rhythm‘.

Triplets

Hear The Bar Above

Another thing to now throw into the mix before moving on is triplets. This is simply a single note, but counted in three. To count a crotchet triplet, as in the bar above, hold your hand in an upright position and count “One, two, three”, moving your hand ‘up, down, up’. One is the upright position, two, the down, three the up position once more.

Triplets can be counted over any value of note: breve, minim, quaver etc.

Articulation

Articulation actually means, “how things are articulated”, or joined together, for example a skeleton or the syllables of a word. In music, the articulation means “what happens in between the notes”. The rests, the accents, the expression of the piece. And articulation depends on what’s at the beginning and end of each segment, as well as in between. We’ve already looked at rests and dots, and will be looking at some basic terms over the next few paragraphs.

Accents

In music notation, an accent mark means “accent the note”. The most common form being the fourth note in the diagram above.

The first note means staccato, meaning the last part of a note should be silenced to create separation between it and the following note, creating a note about half as long as the note value indicated.

The second note means staccatissimo and means a staccato note even smaller than staccato.

The third note, the teepee accent, means ‘play with a combination of accent and staccato‘.

The fourth note, the Accent mark, means that the marked note should have an emphasized beginning and then taper off rather quickly.

The fifth note, the tenudo mark, indicates that a note is to be separated with a little space from surrounding notes.

Legato

Legato is the opposite of staccato, and means that the notes are played “long”, very connected, like there’s no space between them, i.e. continuously. In the bar above, legato indicates this musical feel.

Slurs

A slur looks the same as a tie but has a very different function. Indicating a legato feel, a slur sign means “blend the notes together seamlessly so there’s no space between them”. With a tie, the note doesn’t move, but is “held”.

Slurs can be performed quite fast, as in the sheet music above. Along with violin sections, a lot of singers use slurs as an artifice, often to great effect. Christina Aguilera, Maria Carey, Celine Dion, Beyonce et al. Usually based around a blues or pentatonic scale (check out scales in the “How Music is Constructed” article), they’re a form of ad-libbing. And for more on ad-libbing check out the article: ‘How To Ad-Lib, or Improvise’.

Portamento

The first sign above means Portomento and/or glissando. Portomento means to wobble the note very obviously, similar to using a heavy vibrato, and glissando means to wobble the note and glide, upwards or downwards, a technique used extensively in opera. The bottom symbol above shows the sign for ‘glissando up’ and ‘glissando down’. Portamento was also used extensively by early sythesizer players (think Rick Wakeman), rock guitarists when using the whammy bar(nearly every heavy metal guitarist alive or dead), and, last but not least, the classic portomento instrument, the organ. Hammond in particular. Plus church organs and everything above and between.

Scoops and Falls Offs

These signs are used by composers to show they want a slide down from the note, or a scoop up to it. They haven’t been standardized (except maybe for glissando, the last one, yet their appearance is pretty explanatory.

Grace Notes

Hear example

A grace note means, in essence, an ornamental note, an embellishment to the original. Either on the way up or down to the target note. Used extensively in classical music, this kind of embellishment is usually left up to the taste and skill of a performer in modern genre music, but occasionally you might see it notated.

Tempo Terms

Grave – Very Slow

Largo, Lento – Slow

Larghetto – A little faster than Largo

Adagio – Moderately Slow

Andante – “Walking” Tempo

Andantino – A little faster than Andante

Allegretto – A little slower than Allegro

Allegro – Fast

Vivace – Lively

Presto – Very Fast

Prestissimo – Very Very Fast

Moderato – Moderate(ly)

Molto – Very

Accel., Accelerando - Gradually becoming faster

Rit., Ritardando – Gradually becoming slower

Songs

We’ve now looked at the basics of music notation, let’s take a look at some sheet actual music and what you might expect to encounter.

Songs come in many shapes and sizes, and, although rules are made to be broken, most songs are written in the form of either a verse, or verse and chorus, or verse, chorus and bridge. The classic form for a song is verse, verse, bridge, verse. This form of song is called a “standard”, and refers to the works of composers such as Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. Usually 16 bars for each verse and 8 for the bridge (middle bit), 32 bars in total. Modern genre songs often veer away from this format, so you might just get a verse and a chorus repeated with a small solo section, for example. Or just a riff or hook, repeated at various times throughout the song (for example, rap and hip hop).

Let’s look at the formation of the song used in the “Singing A Song – Putting It All Together” section of the program, the timeless “Amazing Grace”. In this song there are simply 16 bars to each verse, which make it like a traditional Folk song. So we need only look at a single verse to see the basic form of the whole song. To demonstrate this, the version below is a simplified form of the chords and tune, in the key of Eb.

Hear the verse above

Not the most inspiring of versions when there’s no groove, i.e. syncopation, just the basic tune. However, once again we have the time signature in the top left hand side of the sheet music, 3/4 time, demonstrated by the click track. One and two and three.

The chords are played depending on the bars indicated. The notes of the tune are part of the chord within the bar.

This sheet music is split into the treble clef (higher) and bass clef (lower). In this instance, the chords are in the bass clef, the tune in the treble clef. It’s in the key of E flat, shown at the left hand side of the music.

The beginning chords are E flat, the key of the song, then A flat, the fourth note in the key of E flat, and then back to E flat again. And the tune fits in to the key of E flat with every note:

The 9^th (the lyric ‘how’) simply means that from the root of E flat, or wherever you start the scale, you keep counting up 9 notes. So after an octave, E would become the 9^th, G the 10, A flat the 11^th, B flat the 12^th and C the 13^th.

Amazing Grace Full Song

And moving on to the full sheet music of the Amazing Grace version (above) used in the Full Program section “Putting It All Together: Singing A Song”:

This is another 3 stave version of the sheet music, with voice, piano and bass in that order (piano and bass are grouped by the curly sign at the left hand side of the page). It’s in 3/4 time and the key of Eb, with a 4 bar intro.

The chords have been somewhat changed from the first ‘straighter’ version, bringing out the blues and Gospel feel of the song (for more on chords, chord voicings and construction and how they ‘fit in’ to a song, check out the article “How To Ad-Lib, Or Improvise”. There are four different vocal versions of Amazing Grace, soul, Jazz, Folk and Country, with sheet music).

D.S.Al Coda

There’s one sign used in the sheet music above that’s net yet been mentioned, however, D.S. al Coda. Loosely translated, this means ‘ repeat back to the coda sign’. And when the coda is reached, i.e. the coda symbol, to jump to the end of the piece, symbolized by a second coda symbol, and to play to the end. This is notated in the music above as a coda sign at letter A:

There are repeat signs in the same bar of the music. On the next page at the end of the second set of staves is another repeat sign. These two signs are always seen together and mean, of course, ‘play round and round’. The writing ‘repeat A (coda sign) X 5 take Coda last X means just that: 5 verses and then the coda sign, the circle with a cross in it, and jumping to the second coda sign with Coda written by it, to the last 5 bars of the tune.

And So…

There are a plethora of examples of the notation described earlier in the article in the “Amazing Grace Full Version” sheet music above. Semibreves, minims, crotchets, quavers, triplets, rests, a letter A, dots, ties, slurs, a Rallentando, coda, repeat signs et al. Ah yes, and the little sign at the end of the song, the slur with a dot above it on the very last bar, means ‘pause’.

For more information on how to read sheet music, chord voicings and musical notation check out the article “How To Ad-Lib, Or Improvise”. There are four different versions of Amazing Grace (soul, Jazz, folk and Country) with sheet music explained and vocal MP3 examples.

Many thanks to:

Musician/composer/arranger Terry Disley for arranging and writing out the Amazing Grace Full Version sheet music:

terrydisley.com

http://en.wikipedia.org

http://www.theoreticallycorrect.com/MusicFiction/index.html

http://www.dolmetsch.com/index.htm

http://cnx.org/content/m11884/latest/

http://library.thinkquest.org

for many of the above diagrams and information.