Music Theory is a study that allows us to understand the language of music. It is a set of guidelines and practices used to recognize the different ways to express emotions with sound. Learning music theory is essential in order develop your technical sense and it can help you to think more creatively.
So let's start from the basic understanding of notes. There are total of 12 notes in music from which 7 are known as Nature and 5 are known as artificial. Each notes have a different pitch and frequency. The picture of piano below will help you to understand the concept.
Here you can see that white keys shows the Natural notes and the black shows the artificial notes.
In the western theory we take "C" note as the starting note for musical notation, same as we start alphabets from A in English Language. The order goes like C-D-E-F-G-A-B and then other octave starts as you can see in the above picture.
What is an Octave?
An Octave is the combination of 8 keys i.e from C1 to C2. Octave changes refers to the change in pitch, higher the octave higher the pitch and vice versa.
What is a Sharp and Flat note?
Sharp note is denoted with "#" on top and Flat is denoted with "♭" on top of a note. Artificial notes are sharp or flat as shown in the above picture. Sharp note is next half step of a current note. for example if you play C and moves half step then the note will be C# (the first black key). Flat note is previous half step of a current note for example if you play D and moves half step back then the note will be D♭. The important thing here is that C# or D♭ is the same note (first black key) having two different names as shown in the picture. When you move half step forward the note will be represented as sharp but if move half step forward then the note will be represented as flat. Video will be available soon the demonstrate more.
Note: There is no sharp of E and flat of F.
What is Whole Step and Half Step?
Whole step is the distance between two natural notes (white keys) i.e moving from C to D is the whole step. Half step is the distance between a natural note (white keys) and an artificial note (black keys) i.e moving from C to C# is half step.
Note: The Distance between E and F is the half step as there is no black key between E and F as shown in the Picture.
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