Music has the power to move people to tears, inspire them, change their mood and sometimes even change their lives. Every song that is sung comprises a combination of notes which are defined as the pitch and duration of sound. Wikipedia, an encyclopaedia, theorises that the notation of music began during ancient times as early as 1400BC whereby harmonies were composed and written using the diatonic scale. The diatonic scale is one that is made up of seven musical notes. Some studies say that it is possible for musical notes to have existed even earlier than that but that the notes used during that time were difficult to interpret, thus making them hard to understand. Neumes are the known predecessors of today’s musical notes. According to Britannica an encyclopaedia, neumes were graph signs showing the rise and fall of the voice. They were used as memory aids for singers who already knew the words and melody. Greece is believed to be the birthplace of musical notation. According to musical education site The Method behind the Music, Greek mathematician Pythagoras used his knowledge of mathematics and science and created the octave scale in 600 BC. The octave scale comprises eight notes whereby the first and last notes are the same only that the last one sounds higher. If you have ever heard someone sing “do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do,” then they are using the octave. However, the solfege “do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do” was not developed by Pythagoras himself but by Catholic monk Guido D’Arezzo in 1000 AD. He did this to make the notation easier to use and learn. This was during the time when the Catholic Church was aiming for uniformity in the melodies that were sung across the establishment. This is according to New York Public Radio. During the 14th Century, mensuration — the method of assigning pitch and time signatures to musical notes was developed. Musical note values such as the breve, semi-breve, crotchet and minims, quavers could now tell you for how long to sustain a note. According to information platform My Music Theory, standard note (one bit) is the crotchet. In the 21st Century, the development of musical notes has been aided by music production technologies. Notation makes it easy for writers and producers of music to combine musical instruments and use the right keys to produce great sounds. It also makes it easy to pass on a song as accurately as it was originally composed. However, in the absence of musical knowledge, people continue to compose songs without the use of musical notation and pass it on through memorisation just like in ancient times. editorial@newtimes.co.rw
