- Hi, and welcome to this little quiz
called spot the mistakes.
Why are we having this little quiz?
Well, it's a bit of fun, isn't it?
But also there are lots
of people across the world
wanting to write down music
because they're composers or arrangers,
and sometimes they're not entirely sure
about how to go about dealing
with one or two details.
So it might be quite a fun
thing to have a go at this quiz,
but also it might be helpful
in just focusing on one
or two of the things
that maybe sometimes go wrong
when we write down music.
So have a look at this four-bar tune
that I've put on the board.
One thing you might want to do in a moment
is just to pause the film
and have a look through
and see how many mistakes you can spot.
See the things that
you're really confident
about correcting.
See the things that you think, well,
there might be something wrong with that,
but I'm not entirely sure.
Then at the end you'll also see
anything that you've missed.
So have a look through,
and when you're ready,
you can pause, have a look through,
then come back to me.
Okay, how did you get on?
I bet you've found quite a few
mistakes there, haven't you?
Well, let's have a look.
I'll put a fresh stave underneath here,
and then we can go through
and decide what was wrong with it,
because at one level
it sort of looks reasonably all right,
doesn't it, at face value?
I wonder what the first
thing is that you notice.
It's in relation to the treble clef.
Now the clef, though I say it
myself, is quite well drawn,
so there's nothing really
wrong with the clef,
but there is something wrong
with the position of the clef.
Now, there's a treble clef,
it's something known as a G clef,
because the purpose of the
treble clef or the G clef
is to show us where G is on the stave.
So when we write a treble clef,
it's important that we
wrap it around the G line,
the second line up.
So, drawing a treble clef means
that we should position it like that.
So you see what this is doing.
This is telling is that the
third line of the stave is G,
which of course is completely wrong.
The clef is giving us useless information.
So first thing we need to correct
is the positioning of the treble clef.
So there you go.
Okay, is there anything wrong
with the time signature, 3/4?
Well, it means there are
three crotchet beats in a bar.
I'm looking through the piece,
and actually in most bars
there are three crotchet beats.
Not all, we'll come to that later.
But 3/4, nothing wrong with that at all.
Then we've got a key signature,
and there's an F-sharp.
Well, if we're dealing with sharps,
then the first sharp that
we come across is F-sharp,
so that seems perfectly reasonable.
If it's F-sharp, the piece of music
should be in G major or in E minor.
Well, it starts on G, it finishes on G,
it hasn't got any other accidentals,
so it does look as if
it's probably in G major.
So there's nothing wrong with
the F-sharp, or is there?
First of all, this F-sharp
ought to be positioned an octave higher.
It's a funny one, this, isn't it,
because you think, well what
difference does it make really?
The answer is not a lot,
but there's a convention that says
that when we write the first sharp,
we always write it high in the clef.
So if you're dealing
with the treble clef, the
alto clef, or the bass clef,
your first sharp, the F-sharp,
should be high in the clef.
It's worth noting that if you're
dealing with a tenor clef,
that's the only clef
in which the F-sharp is low in the clef.
So low for tenor clef,
high for everybody else.
The other thing is that
the convention again
is that the key signature comes
before the time signature.
Here we've got them round the wrong way,
and that's a very common
mistake that people make.
Here's a way of remembering it.
The girl's name Katie.
K-T.
K for key signature, T for time signature.
So if you remember K-T
instead of tea cake, you'll be all right.
So we need the F-sharp
at the top of the stave,
and we need that ahead
of the time signature.
There's the F-sharp.
There's the time signature.
So you can see just before we
even get to the first note,
there are a few things
that were adrift there.
Let's now look at the notes.
The first note looks pretty
okay to me, actually,
so I think we can keep that as it is.
There's the G for a dotted crotchet.
The A that follows
looks pretty good to me,
so we might as well
keep that as it stands.
The B and the C at the end of the bar.
Well, those two quavers come
inside beat number three,
so there's no reason why they
can't be joined together,
or beamed together, as we say.
So let's join them together,
but while we're doing that,
let's think about the
direction of the stems.
When you have a note on the middle line,
the stem can go up, or it can go down.
Once you've got notes
above the middle line,
the stem should really go down.
Once you've got notes
below the middle line,
the stem should go up.
So this stem for the C at the end
should definitely be going down.
The B could be either way.
So on balance, the stem should go down.
Let's beam them together, and there we go.
Along comes a bar line.
Nothing wrong with the bar line.
Then there's a minim D,
nothing wrong with that, so that's okay.
Then when I look at this next note,
I'm thinking there's nothing
really wrong with the B,
but there's something wrong
with the rhythm in this bar, isn't there?
This bar, as it stands, contains
only two and a half beats.
So, really, probably the
answer is that this B
shouldn't be a quaver,
should be a crotchet.
All right.
Another bar line.
Then I'm looking at this next note
thinking this note has not
been very well drawn, has it?
It's kind of mostly in the third space,
but it's kind of also
overlapping onto the third line.
So is it C, is it B?
It's not entirely clear, is it?
But it does look on balance
as if it should be C.
So when we draw our notes,
be really sure when we
have a note in a space
that it kind of absolutely
sits inside the space,
and when you have a note on a line,
it absolutely sits so
the middle of the note
is where the line is.
Then it's crystal clear what we're doing.
Okay, we've got three beats in this bar,
so that's good, isn't it?
You might have noticed in the light
of what we were saying earlier on,
the stem direction is now
incorrect for the next note.
So that A should have a stem going up,
because it's sitting
below the middle line.
You might have noticed
something else that's
wrong with that note.
Have you noticed the stem is going down
on the right-hand side of the note?
There's a little convention.
When the stem goes down,
it should be on the
left-hand side of the note.
When the stem goes up,
it should be on the
right-hand side of the note.
So that's dealt with that
one while we're at it.
Okay, into the last bar.
Now something slightly more complicated
going on with the rhythm,
so let's have a little think about this.
Dotted quaver,
that's going to be worth
three quarters of a beat.
We're following that with a semiquaver
that's worth a quarter of a beat.
So three quarters plus a quarter,
well, that's one beat, isn't it?
Both those notes sit inside
the first beat of the bar,
so they should be beamed together.
So we'll take care of that.
You might also notice this dot
is in a rather strange place.
Because the note is here,
the dot should be in the same space.
So when you write a note in a space,
the dot goes in the same space.
When you write a note on a line,
the dot should go in the
space just above the line,
so we can see it.
If you put the dot on the
line, quite difficult to see.
So when it's a space,
same space for the dot.
When it's a line, the space
above the line for the dot.
Okay, we'll take care of the dot,
and we'll also beam these
first two notes together,
and then they will look like this.
That's what should be going on there.
I'm looking at the next note
now, saying, well hang on.
If this takes up the
first beat of the bar,
then there are two beats left.
Should that really be a dotted crotchet?
No.
Should be a minim,
and then we've got
three beats in that bar.
So there's the minim to finish the piece,
and then there's a bar line.
Assuming that this is
the end of the piece,
which I am for this purpose,
are we happy with a single bar line,
or do we need a double bar line?
Lots of people when they
come to the end of a piece
forget to write the double bar line.
So there we are.
Same piece of music, but with
all those mistakes corrected.
Now you can do your own sort of score
and work out how many you've got there.
If you found all of those
mistakes and corrected them,
then congratulations.
That is absolutely fantastic,
and you're obviously really
safe with all of this.
If you got some of them, that's great.
If you missed any, well,
here's an opportunity
just to think about the
things that you missed,
and it should just help
to fine-tune the writing down of music.
So, if you're someone
who writes down music,
composes, arranges, enjoy it to the full.
I hope that's been a useful little quiz.
