Thursday, December 3, 2009

Math and Music

This is a simple explanation of musical notes, their types and values.In standard notation, a single musical sound is written as a note. The two most important things a written piece of music needs to tell you about a note are its pitch and its duration, but we will mostly talk about their duration
http://www.abcteach.com/free/w/whole_note_bw.jpg
The simplest-looking note, with no stems or flags, is a whole note. All other note lengths are defined by how long they last compared to a whole note.
http://www.abcteach.com/free/h/half_note_bw.jpg
A note that lasts half as long as a whole note is a half note. Half notes are notated with a hollow oval note head and a straight note stem with no flags.2 half notes make a whole note.
http://www.abcteach.com/free/q/quarter_note_bw.jpg
A quarter note is 1/4 of a whole note and is represented with a shaded in oval shown above with no flags.4 quarter notes make a whole note.
https://www.glastonburyus.org/staff/LungL/PublishingImages/eighth_note_bw.jpg
A eighth note is 1/8 of a whole note and has one flag.
http://www.clipartguide.com/_small/0808-0801-1115-4721.jpg
A sixteenth note is 1/16 of a whole note meaning 16 16th notes make a whole note.This note has 2 flags

http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/textt/images/Thirty-secondnote.jpg
A thirty second note is 1/32 of a whole note.And has 3 flags.
http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/texts/images/Sixty-fourthnote.jpg
And a sixty-fourth note is 1/64 of a whole note and so on....(there is also a 128th note)http://www.igdb.co.uk/pages/music-theory-lessons/images/note-duration-relationship.pnghttp://cnx.org/content/m10945/latest/notes3.png
On this staff, you can see how 1 whole note equals 2 half notes as 4 quarters equal 8 eighth notes.
http://www.bandnotes.info/rhythm/images/pyramid.gif
This picture also shows how all notes can be related to a whole note as fractions.
(Other things i did not go into are dotted notes,notes with out heads,notes with slashes, and many more)
So over all this was made to show how fractions are used in music.