The image below, shows all the notes in the key of C Major. Just like the A minor pentatonic scale you have learned, learning the C Major scale and each mode is very important and is needed to becoming a successful guitar player/musician. Once you learn the key of C Major and all the guitar modes in the major key, you can use the same fingering patterns to play the major scale in other keys. The A minor pentatonic scale you have learned in a previous guitar lesson, comes right out of the Aeolian mode, which is the 6th mode in the key of C Major. These sharps and flats are called accidentals. The black keys on the piano are the sharps and flats that make up other major scales or keys. If you were sitting at the piano, it would be all the white keys. The key of C major has no sharps or flats. (“Breve” is related to the word “brief”, and used to be one of the fastest notes available to composers!) This symbol is also known as “cut common time”.In this lesson, I would like to explain the key of C Major, the guitar modes and the guitar chords that make up the major scale. Today, of course, the main beat of 2/2 is the minim (half note) – this is because all the note lengths we use today used to be played more quickly hundreds of years ago. We call this time signature “alla breve”, because when it was first used, the main beat was a breve (double whole note). Today we use the symbol to mean the same as 2/2. All four of the old time signatures could have a line through them for the same effect. The semicircle showed that the time was “imperfect”, and the vertical line made it “ tempus imperfectum diminutum” – to be played twice as fast as normal imperfect time. We still use another one of the old “mensuration signs” today – the C with a vertical line through it. But "C" was a convenient and quick symbol, and continued to be used widely. Mensural rhythms got so complicated that almost nobody could understand them, and the modern "fraction-style" time signatures were invented. Over time music evolved, and "C" was considered to represent four beats in the bar, rather than two. Here's what the C time signature used to look like in a manuscript (notice that barlines didn't exist yet!) Here are the four old time signatures, with their modern equivalents: When the beat is subdivided into three, it was called "prolatio maior" (shown by a dot), and if it is subdivided into two, it is "prolatio minor". "Perfectum" means there were three main beats in the bar, and "Imperfectum" means two. In contrast, music with 2 or 4 beats in the bar was considered “ imperfect”, and was represented by a semi-circle – which happens to also look a lot like a C! In the 13-17 th centuries, people considered music in triple time (that is, with three beats in the bar), to be “ perfect”, (something to do with the Holy Trinity – the number three has religious connections!) Perfection was represented by a complete circle, so music in triple time had a full circle as the “time signature” (the correct term for these signs is actually “mensuration sign”). The sign that can be used instead of the usual 4/4 time signature looks like a capital C.Ī lot of people think that it really is a C, and that it stands for “common time”, but that’s not really very accurate. We use both symbols simply because "C" is a hanger-on from centuries past! In practice, 4/4 and C are exactly the same. Is there any difference between these two different symbols? Why do they both exist? Music which has four beats per bar is sometimes given a 4/4 time signature, and sometimes a "C". Q: What's the Difference Between 4/4 and C?
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