Distance Learning

DISTANCE LEARNING!!!

Well, here I am again, sitting down to type out the second part of this necessary (as I hope) column. Last time, I enlightened the world about chord names, notes, and other trivia; today, my narrative will dive a bit deeeeeper (meaning, the further in you go, the closer you are to coming out :).

First, a bit about notes.
As was already mentioned before, notes—whether on a guitar or on any other gizmo, as practice (mine) shows—are the same everywhere, so everything said below belongs to that very same sandbox.

1. Notes are divided into...
   A note is a specific pitch of sound; most often, between two notes there is another note—a semitone (see below).
   A note can be raised or lowered by a semitone (or an N-th number of them).
   Any note raised by 1 semitone is assigned the sign "#" — SHARP!
   Any note lowered by 1 semitone is assigned the sign "b" — FLAT!

2. Not all notes have semitones!

In light of this, here is a table below:

         ┌───┬────┬───┬────┬───┐
  2.1    │Do │░░░░│Re │░░░░│Mi │
         ├───┼────┼───┼────┼───┤
         │░░░│Do #│░░░│Re #│░░░│
         │░░░│Re b│░░░│Mi b│░░░│
         └───┴────┴───┴────┴───┘
         ┌──┬──────┬────┬──────┐
   2.2   │Fa│░░░░░░│Sol │░░░░░░│
         ├──┼──────┼────┼──────┤
         │░░│Fa #  │░░░░│Sol # │
         │░░│Sol b │░░░░│La b  │
         └──┴──────┴────┴──────┘
               ┌──┬────┬──┐
               │La│░░░░│Si│
   2.3         ├──┼────┼──┤
               │░░│La #│░░│
               │░░│Si b│░░│
               └──┴────┴──┘

Well, I think everything is as clear with these tables as with the multiplication table (for anyone who hasn't forgotten it yet).
It also follows from the table that a note can only be raised by 1 semitone (see above), because if, say, you append "##" to the note "DO", you will get the note "RE" already!!! And so on; the only exceptions are the notes "MI" and "SI", i.e., raising them by just 1 semitone yields "FA" and "DO" respectively. The former have no sharps, the latter have no flats!

NOTE:
I am mainly talking about sharps because only they are used in computer music trackers, but this does not apply to writing notes on paper (music sheet, musical stave); I mention this just for general awareness.

3. Notes are determined by bars (see below). A bar (measure) is a certain figure that allows you to count notes in a melody in equal parts, looking roughly like this:
   3.1. 4/4 — four quarters in one bar (four quarter notes (see below));
   3.2. 2/2 — two half notes in one bar; and so on.
   Bars are counted like: 4/4 — one-and, two-and, three-and, four-and. The next bar starts the count anew.

4. Notes are also drawn (on paper) as a horizontal oval and designated as:

    ┌────────────┬────────┬───────────┐
    │note symbol │ note   │ count by  │
    │            │ name   │ beats     │
    ├────────────┼────────┼───────────┤
    │open oval   │ whole  │1&, 2&, 3&,│
    │            │        │4&         │
    ├────────────┼────────┼───────────┤
    │open oval   │ half   │ one-and,  │
    │with a stem │        │ two-and   │
    ├────────────┼────────┼───────────┤
    │filled -//- │quarter │ one-and   │
    │with a stem │        │           │
    ├────────────┼────────┼───────────┤
    │filled -//- │eighth  │ one (and) │
    │w/ stem &   │        │           │
    │flag        │        │           │
    ├────────────┼────────┼───────────┤
    │filled -//- │16th    │ on "one" -│
    │w/ stem & 2 │        │ 2 notes   │
    │flags       │        │           │
    └────────────┴────────┴───────────┘

And so on...
If you suddenly decide to transcribe a melody from sheet music onto the computer, this will come in very handy (meaning, it will help when splitting into PATTERNs by bars).

A bit about PATTERNs.
In any tracker, after loading, the default PATTERN size is set to 64. Some trackers allow you to set PATTERNs individually (i.e. the first pattern is 64, the second is 32, the third is 48, etc. For example: ProTracker 2.4, ExTracker 1.32), while in some, the size is set for all patterns at once :(( for example: SOUND TRACKER )).

The sizes of PATTERNs also depend on the SPEED MELODY: the faster the speed, the larger the distance between notes. Example:
At speed = 5, the distance between two notes is 2 (i.e., note 1 is at 00, note 2 is at 03, with two skipped rows between them). Change SPEED = 6, then, to keep the melody at the same tempo, reduce the distance between notes to 1 (i.e., only one skipped row between notes). In general, at speed = #0f, you can cram almost the entire melody into a single PATTERN :))))... just kidding...

I usually divide PATTERNs into 4 equal parts, and it turns out differently depending on the situation:
1) 1 part = 16 (with 64 notes in a PATTERN);
2) 1 part = 12 (with 48 notes in a PATTERN),
and so on.

Well, I won't describe instruments, nor ornaments—refer to the manual for your specific tracker, though in my opinion, it's almost the same across all trackers, with a few differences.
And actually, you don't even have to do anything: just take ready-made stuff from any tune you like and rip it all to disk, so you can use those tricks for yourself later.

From the AUTHOR:
I am not providing any specific tips or recommendations on using trackers or writing your own music, since everyone's editing style and approach is unique (it develops during the learning process ;), and a newbie is a newbie even in Africa......

END.