What Is A Musical Staff And A Grand Staff (personalized gifts online)

August 8th, 2008 admin Posted in music |

By Mike Shaw

The staff is basically a set of five horizontal lines that appear vertically thus creating four spaces and on these lines and spaces as they are called, musical notes are written. The lower down the notes are written on the staff the lower the pitch and the higher up the higher the pitch. Of course, there a little bit more to it than that, so let’s go in to a bit more detail.

The Staff

The staff is a very generic term, and would be used in a musical environment such as a music teacher and pupil. A more accurate term would be musical staff. Of course even this to a non-musical person could mean a companies workforce or staff that sing every day (get it, staff that are musical). Just to confuse things even more the staff is also known as a stave or a musical stave. Depending on where in the world you learn music will determine which word you use, but they are both correct. (All this for five horizontal lines.)

Make sense of the staff

The staff on it own is quite unremarkable as you can probably imagine, just five lines, but it can be like a canvas for great works of art or simple melodies. To start creating music on these lines we first need to add a clef, which for a single musical staff is normally a treble clef, a time signature so we know how many beats to the bar the music will have. Then we need to add bar lines, which in turn create bars, and within those bars we will add musical notes and suddenly our five horizontal lines have turned in to a music composition, albeit simple, but music never the less.

The Grand Staff

This is a bit more complex than the staff and includes two sets of five lines connected together with a symbol known as a brace and also includes a treble clef on the top set of lines and a bass cleff on the bottom set of lines. Both clefs are always written on the left hand side of the Grand Staff. Again, time signature and bar lines will be added to the Grand Staff and finally musical notes added to the top set of lines, now known as the treble clef and the bottom set now called the bass clef.

From this simple canvas or manuscript as it is called, music is written for electronic keyboard and piano. The electronic keyboard normally uses the staff (one set of five lines) using the treble clef and you will often see chord symbols above it to indicate which chord should be played with the left hand. The piano will normally use a Grand Staff. The treble clef is used for the right hand and the bass clef used for the left hand.

To get a better understanding of the staff and the Grand Staff look at a piece of sheet music and you can see what has been added to those simple five horizontal lines.

Visit Mikes websites for Beginners Piano Lessons and Video and Audio Piano Lessons. You can also view our selection of used Pianos and Keyboards

Learning Music as an Adult
By Duane Shinn

While we have all heard stories of child prodigies and the importance of learning music as a child, an adult can still learn to play an instrument quite well. Even with no prior experience, the right training can help an adult learn to play music just as well as a child. The main thing is to find the right way to learn, whether it’s through a tutor or self-study.

Adult learners come with their own baggage, often from childhood lessons. Adult piano students may have had bad experiences with music lessons as a child. These can range from scary instructors to endless exercises or abusive teacher-student relationships. Sometimes a teacher may have punished the student for not being skilled enough, while other times a teacher may have pushed a promising student too hard. This is one of the hurdles that come with learning music as an adult.

Accepting the teacher as an authority figure is another difficulty that comes with learning music as an adult. An adult has learned to be independent. An adult wants to take part in the development of curriculum and wants to be able to self-evaluate. It may be difficult for an adult to simply listen and take instruction from a music instructor. So the best avenue for learning music as an adult may be to self-tutor or to find an instructor who teaches by long distance via the internet. There are many wonderful piano courses available nowdays on the web: just type in something like “play piano” on any search engine, and you’ll find several.

Though the process of learning music as an adult is different from a child’s, it’s not necessarily harder. For a child, making music is magical, while an adult sees the work involved to get to the music making stage. It’s mainly a mental hurdle that must be overcome. Also, learning music as a child is part of the natural development process, while learning music as an adult is usually part of a larger goal. For example, an adult learns how to play an instrument to join the church worship team.

Learning music as an adult can also be difficult because of ingrained personality traits. Even the most outwardly confident adults get insecure when someone points out their flaws. So it goes with learning music. If a tutor is used, an adult can get embarrassed when the tutor corrects a mistaken note or technique. Some adults may have difficulty breathing and concentrating when they’re highly nervous. All of these can lead to a difficult learning environment.

Adults also demand comfort. This is why adults often learn an instrument in their own home. Children are less demanding about the hardness of a piano bench, for example. Adults may have back problems or other conditions that require a high comfort level.

So the basic ingredients for learning music as an adult are adaptable tutoring, reason for learning, confidence and comfort. By taking these key points and seeking the best method of learning for yourself, you can become an adult musical genius — well, maybe not a genius — maybe just a person who has more fun. Or maybe you’ll be the guy or gal at parties who knows how to play the latest song everyone is talking about. With the right teaching, grown ups can enjoy playing music wherever they go.

Duane Shinn is the author of the popular online newsletter on piano chords, available free at “Exciting Piano Chords & Chord Progressions!”

The Material Girl To Tour Spain in September
By Roger Munns

Madonna recently announced plans to tour Spain in September 2008. Her Spanish shows will include a show on 16 September in Madrid, which will be followed by a show two days later at the Cheste Race Track in Valencia.

Madonna is currently on tour to support her latest album, Hard Candy, which was released on 29 April 2008. Hard Candy is her 11th studio album with Warner Brothers. It is the follow up album to Confessions on a Dance Floor, which sold over eight million copies worldwide and debuted at number one on the charts in thirty countries.

Hard Candy expands on the clubby dance anthems of Confessions on a Dance Floor. On the new album, Madonna collaborates with the top names in modern dance music, like Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams of The Neptunes and Nate ‘Danja’ Hills.

The first single off the album, entitled ‘4 Minutes’ is a collaboration with Timberlake and Timbaland. It was released on 17 March. It earned Madonna her 37th Billboard Top 100 hit, making her the artist with the most Top 10 hits in the history of the chart. The record was previously held by Elvis Presley. In the UK, the song was Madonna’s thirteenth number one single, retaining her record for the most number one singles for a female artist.

Madonna’s career in the entertainment industry began when she left her hometown in the suburbs of Detroit to become a ballet dancer in New York City. She arrived in the Big Apple with only $35 in her pocket. She often states that the move was the bravest thing she’d ever done.

She soon became romantically involved with musician Dan Gilroy, and they formed a band called Breakfast Club. Madonna sang and played drums and guitar. In 1980, she formed another band called Emmy with former boyfriend Stephen Bray. This project caught the attention of New York’s club scene, and a local dj passed their demo along to Sire Records executive Seymour Stein.

Madonna was soon signed to the label. By 1983, she released a self-titled debut solo album. Over the course of the 1980’s, she released three consecutive albums that made their way into the Billboard Top 200.

Since the early days of her career, Madonna has been a pop icon and a fashion trendsetter. Her success is due in part to her ability to transform her image. From naughty girl to children’s book author, Madonna has been everything in between over the course of the last three decades.

Madonna has been dubbed ‘The Queen of Pop’ by music journalists. She is the top-earning female musician in the world with an estimated net worth of over $400 million US dollars, according to Guinness World Records. With over 200 million albums sold, she is the top selling female artist of the twentieth century.

In March 2008, she was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Fans in Spain and the world over are sure to enjoy her upcoming tour dates in support of her new album.

More information about Spain, including the island of Lanzarote is at yourlanzarote.net

They include hotels in Lanzarote with the Lanzarote weather

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