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The Bauhaus is the most famous and influential school of art and design in the 20th century. Mostly classical forms are used for the Bauhaus. By using our Bauhaus Art Generator, you can create your unique design. You can easily change settings, for example, shapes and palettes, to create your unique style!

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Every sound is created from vibrations in the air.

Not just the ones you know, like A through G, but everything in between. So how do we pick which notes to use?

Can you see the repeating pattern in the first one? Your ears can hear the simple ratio between these waves.

It turns out that when the waves line up in nice patterns, it sounds good!!! Our ears like it when the ratio between the waves are simple.

For example, three waves of note #1 for every two waves of note #2 is a 3:2 ratio. Now try it for yourself.

Click each of the options to see the wave form.

Again, which note do you think will sound good with this note. Hover over each of the options to see the wave form.

A lot of music theory is about limiting which notes to use in your song to a small set that sound good together. The earliest set of such notes was called the Pentatonic Scale. It has five notes and looks like this:

Click the circles to play the notes.

Lets look at each of these notes and their waveforms.

One of the most important things to understand is that the notes themselves aren't important. You could start the pentatonic scale on any frequency. In this case, Note 1 has a frequency of 200Hz, but it could be any other number as well.

What is important is the ratio the other notes have with Note 1. Lets take a look.

Lastly is Note 2 with a ratio of 9:8 (225Hz). You can see that for every eight of Note 1 there are nine of Note 2.

You might have noticed that this ratio isn't as simple and therefore these two notes don't sound as nice together as some of the previous notes.

The Pentatonic Scale (below) that we just covered is limiting in a lot of ways. The notes are not consistently spaced and there are so few of them. Modern music demands a more flexible system.

Thus the Chromatic Scale was born. This system added 7 more notes to fill in the gaps while still including all the notes from the Pentatonic Scale. Click to hear the notes.

Almost all modern instruments are built to this system, including guitars, keyboards, woodwinds, etc. For example, see how the keys of the piano below match up to the 12-note system.

At this point we've only been labeling the notes 1 through 12. It's time to show you their real names.

Unfortunately, I truly believe that the naming of the notes is why music theory is so difficult. If I could go back in time, I would not name the notes this way. But since it's what we've been using for thousands of years, there's no real way around it. Here they are:

Let's point out some poor qualities about this:

We use 7 letters to describe 12 notes.

There are sharps (#) each of which can also be called a flat (♭).

Not all the notes have sharps or flats.

The natural letters will play a C Major scale, but only when you start on C.

This 12-note system has a lot of nice properties. The first is Equal Temperament. This means that the interval between any two adjacent notes is exactly the same.

Why is this useful? Well it means we can start a melody on any note.

Here we'll take a look at three of the most common chords: Major, Minor, and Diminished. These are all known as Triads, simply a chord with three notes.

The Major Chord is the most common chord. Whenever you're asked to play a chord without specifying what type, then it's a Major chord. (For example, D Chord = D Major Chord).

Start with any note. This is the first note in the chord.

For the second note, count up four notes.

For the third note, count up three more notes.

The chord is named after the first note.

Click any note to see its Major Chord.

The Minor Chord is similar to the Major Chord except that the second note is one lower:

Start with any note. This is the first note in the chord.

For the second note, count up three notes.

For the third note, count up four more notes.

The chord is named after the first note.

Click a note to see its Minor Chord.

The Diminished Chord is a less common chord where the third note is one lower than the Minor chord's third note.

Start with any note. This is the first note in the chord.

For the second note, count up three notes.

For the third note, count up three more notes.

The chord is named after the first note.

Click a note to see its Diminished Chord.

Because not all of the 12 notes sound good together, we must select a set of notes to use in a song. This is a Key.

When a song says that it is in the key of C Major or D Minor this is simply telling you which of the 12 notes are used in this song.

That's it.

Here's a little tool to help you find the notes in any Key. Notice how the pattern never changes. Instead we just shift where we begin our Key pattern.

C Major Key

So far we've learned that:

a Key is a collection of notes used in a song

a Chord is a set of notes, played together, that sound good

and we've learned about Major, Minor, and Diminished chords.

Now, since a Key is a limited set of notes used in a song, not all chords fit in a given Key. Some will be Major, some will be Minor, and some will be Diminished.

The chords that fit in a particular Key are called Diatonic Chords.

Look at the pattern of chords above. Notice how they are identical for both C Major and E Major?

Well, it turns out that every Major Key has 7 triads that follow the same pattern: Major, minor, minor, Major, Major, minor, Diminished.

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Every sound is created from vibrations in the air. Not just the ones you know, like A through G, but everything in between. So how do we pick which notes to use? Can you see the repeating pattern in the first one? Your ears can hear the simple ratio between these waves.

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World-class resources on art and cultural objects for learners from around the globe

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The guitar is out of tune again!

We'll start by tuning to a reference note. When you manipulate the tuners on the right the current note will be played, as will a reference note.

This will be easier with a cleaner sound. Match the two sounds to get the guitar in tune.

Harmonic Intervals.

Most of the strings on a guitar are separated by an interval known as a perfect fourth.

The perfect fourth is beautifully resonant, but there's one pair of strings on a guitar which are not separated by a perfect fourth.
These intervals show up all the time in music, for example, the major third can be found the first two notes of The Saints. The first two notes of Amazing Grace form a perfect fourth.
Learning to hear these intervals will help you tune your guitar without a tuner.

Find the beat.

When two strings are played together, they produce a third higher frequency known as an overtone.

When the two strings are not perfectly in tune, the overtone is inconsistent over time. This produces a wobbling, a beat, in the overtone which you can hear if you listen carefully.

Play notes with a 5.00 Hz difference:

As you get a pair of strings closer in tune, the beats will slow down until the overtone is perfectly amplified. Listening for the slowing of these beats is a helpful cue for tuning.

Try tuning the guitar by listening for the relationships between adjacent strings and the beats in the resultant overtone.

This page was built using Idyll, a markup language for interactive documents. The guitar was created using Sketch Interactive Export, D3, and a modified version of Tone.js. Audio samples were provided by freesound.org user SpeedY.

This project is from the Interactive Data Lab at the University of Washington.

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The guitar is out of tune again! We'll start by tuning to a reference note. When you manipulate the tuners on the right the current note will be played, as will a reference note. This will be easier with a cleaner sound. Match the two sounds to get the guitar in tune.

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Beat Basics

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The two grey circles on this page each represent a rhythm. Go ahead and hover over them to play a rhythm one at a time. They don't sound the same, do they?

Intuitively, we may know that they are different by picking up a few visual or aural cues. For example, the number and positioning of the circles are different for each rhythm, and the beats corresponding with the circles aren't at the same place.

Parsing out these differences perhaps isn't the most difficult task for us to do at a high level, so let's break it down a bit more.

THE BASICS

In a TedEd video, John Varney defines rhythm as "essentially an event repeating regularly over time". But as the video explains, a uniform event over time doesn't really lend itself to the more complex musical rhythms that we have on the right. Consider a simple cycle divided into 6 beats:

In order for us to get this strand to resemble our two musical rhythms, we have to assign stresses or accents to the beats and figure out when to place a beat. Try hovering over the two right rhythms again.

All we've really done is assign the strongest emphasis to the first beat and a weaker emphasis to the others. Delegating emphasis to beats within that six-beat cycle gives us the basic foundations of what we call3/4 time signature (top rhythm) and6/8 (bottom rhythm).

BREAKING IT DOWN

One of the easiest ways to differentiate the two is by counting.

For the 3/4 time signature, we can keep track of the cycle by repeating:

The "2" and "3″ represent the weaker beats (or commonly, upbeats) whereas the "and"s allow us to subdivide the rhythm to better illustrate how we are dividing the circle. In this case, we are splitting the cycle into three groups of two.

Similarly, we can also break up the 6/8 rhythm into groups. When you hover over the bottom rhythm, our repeating phrase will be:

This rhythm lets us split the circle into two groups of three which elongates the phrasing a bit. This simple variance in partitioning the circle gave us an entirely different rhythm and feel. Neat, right?

Note that for 6/8, it is also common to count numerically from 1 to 6 (see alternative counting). For this type of counting, an emphasis on the first and fourth beat signifies a 6/8 time signature, whereas a strong emphasis on the first and weaker emphasis on the third and fifth beats signal 3/4.

LET'S LISTEN!

The best way to get a feel for the two is to see -- or rather, hear -- them in action.

Both time signatures are common in songs you've probably heard. For this introduction however, we'll be listening to Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers for 3/4 and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 Mvmt. 2 for 6/8. Note that changes in tempo will speed up or slow down our rhythms.

The numbers are still up on our circles to help with counting. Go ahead and hover over the audio clips! See if you can hear differences in the phrasing of notes in the two cycles.

WHY STOP HERE?

This was only an introductory, surface level exploration of the two rhythms, but there is a lot more to dive into, such as what the numbers in time signatures mean.

Hopefully, it helped improve intuition on how to differentiate and recognize the two at a basic level. However, there are many more nuances to the rhythms and many different kinds of rhythms to explore as well.

Don't know where to start? I recommend taking a peek here for Khan Academy's introductory series to rhythm in general.

References and Appreciation

This post was created using Tone.js and Idyll, an open-source markup language created by Matthew Conlen

Thanks to Noelle Vo for recording Mozart's Piano Concerto at a moment's notice

Super special thanks to Matt Conlen for guidance, mentorship, and feedback

1. Varney, John. "A Different Way to Visualize Rhythm - John Varney." Lessons Worth Sharing | TED-Ed, TED-Ed, 20 Oct. 2014, ed.ted.com/lessons/a-different-way-to-visualize-rhythm-john-varney.

2. Joutsenvirta, Aarre, and Jari Perkiömäki. "Time Signatures." Music Theory – Consonance and Dissonance, www2.siba.fi/muste1/index.php?id=98&la=en.

3. "Simple and Compound Meter." Musictheory.net, www.musictheory.net/lessons/15.

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The two grey circles on this page each represent a rhythm. Go ahead and hover over them to play a rhythm one at a time. They don't sound the same, do they? Intuitively, we may know that they are different by picking up a few visual or aural cues.

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Return to City Center

In a return to pre-pandemic tradition, the magic of Ailey will shine at New York City Center for a full five weeks, giving audiences the opportunity to once again celebrate the holidays with Ailey. Tickets on sale now!

Explore the Season

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SI Kids: Sports News for Kids, Kids Games and More

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Download royalty free music and sheet music in PDF for free. We are a non-profit with the largest selection of public domain music and educational resources.

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