Musical Notes - Our Music Ministry Web Page!

Thank you!

A big THANK YOU to the Women's Choir who helped us celebrate our patronal feast day, The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Your music was magnificent, and added greatly to the celebration!

If you would like more information about singing at mass or joining the Choir, Contact Diane Peters at 497-0937 for more information, or stop back at this page regularly to watch for future opportunities!

Singing Tips

Below are some tips for singing to your full potential!

• When you are singing from the Hymnal, try keeping your face pointing forward and holding the hymnal up. Most folks tend to hold their hymnal lower or rest it on the pew in front of them. This results in your windpipe contracting, causing you not to have enough air to really sing strong.
• Be careful not to hold the book directly in front of your face. This can result in the sound bouncing back at you rather than out for others to hear.
• Many people tend to sing a little more quietly than what they should. When you do this, your voice is not sounding as beautiful as what it should, because you are limiting air flow. If you sing louder, you will sound better!

Quick Music Lessons

We will start with the first item you will see in a piece of music. That is the Clef.
There are two main types of Clefs. The Treble Clef , and the Bass Clef .
To keep the definition simple, Clefs control what lines the notes fall on, so that the notes that we are singing never go too far above or below the lines, keeping the notes easy for us to read.
When we are singing in church, we utilize the Treble Clef , because that particular Clef keeps the notes that are in our voice range within the range of the staffs, or lines, not going too far above or below.

The Bass Clef is used mainly for select instruments.
When you see talented members of our parish playing the piano at Church, they are actually using both the Treble Clef and Bass Clef at the same time!

The next thing we see after the clef on the music is a bunch of Sharps ( ) or Flats ( ). This is called the key signature. It determines which notes are sharp (or a little bit higher than normal) and which ones are flat (or a little bit lower than normal).

In music, the alphabet isn't quite as long as in the English language. It goes A, B, C, D, E, F, G. That's it! In our last lesson, we learned that the clef controls where these notes fall. In the treble clef (the one we use for singing in Church), the letters of notes fall as follows:

To keep this easy to remember, we spell out the spaces with the word FACE.

The lines don't spell out anything, so we remember them with a phrase: Every Good Boy Does Fine.

From there, you can figure out the notes above or below the lines by completing the alphabet.

Back to the flats and sharps. In the key signature, the lines that a Sharp or flat appears on controls what notes will be higher or lower. It makes the music a lot easier to read, because we do not have to have a lot of sharp and flat symbols scattered throughout the song. Remember, because notes can be above or below the lines, it will have an effect on more than just the note on that line. It will affect any note with that letter name. For example, if "F" is sharp, all notes called "F" are sharp, even if they are not on the same line as the sharp in the key signature. As an example, both of the notes below are F, so they are both sharp.

After the Key Signature comes the Time Signature ( ). It consists of two numbers, one on top of the other, kind of like a fraction.

Have you ever tapped your feet to the beat of a song? What the time signature does is to organize those beats into measures. The top number represents the number of beats per measure, and the bottom number represents the type of note that gets a beat.

A measure is a length of sheet music separated by dividing lines.

There are a number of different types of notes, each held for a different length. We will go through those notes in more detail at the next lesson, but for purposes of explaining the time signature, let me introduce:
The whole note (), the quarter note (), and the eighth note ().
The whole note is held 4 times as long as a quarter note, and 4 quarter notes would equal a whole note. An eighth note is half the length of a quarter note, so 8 eighth notes would be the same length as a whole note. Two eighth notes would be the same length as one quarter note. It's just like math!

In 4/4 time, the 4 on top represents that there are 4 beats in a measure. The 4 on the bottom represents that a quarter note is the length of a beat. Some measures would look as follows:


If we were to change it up a bit, and make the timing 2/4, the quarter note would still get the beat, but now there would only be 2 beats (or quarter notes) per measure., Here are some measure examples:



Let's try one that is a little more complicated. In 6/8 time, there are 6 beats per measure and an 8th note is the length of the beat. Here are some examples: