List Of Musical Symbols - Music Symbols

Musical symbols are the marks and symbols, used since about the 13th century in the musical notation of musical scores, styles, and instruments to describe pitch, rhythm, tempo and, to some degree, its articulation (a composition in its fundamentals).

Lines

Clefs

Clefs define the pitch range, or tessitura, of the staff on which it is placed. A clef is usually the leftmost symbol on a staff. Additional clefs may appear in the middle of a staff to indicate a change in register for instruments with a wide range. In early music, clefs could be placed on any of several lines on a staff.

Notes and rests

Musical note and rest values are not absolutely defined, but are proportional in duration to all other note and rest values. The whole note is the reference value, and the other notes are named (in American usage) in comparison; i.e., a quarter note is a quarter of the length of a whole note.

Durations shorter than the 64th are rare but not unknown. 128th notes are used by many composers, including Mozart and Beethoven; 256th notes occur in works by Vivaldi, Mozart and Beethoven. An extreme case is the Toccata Grande Cromatica by early-19th-century American composer Anthony Philip Heinrich, which uses note values as short as 2,048ths; however, the context shows clearly that these notes have one beam more than intended, so they should really be 1,024th notes.

The name of very short notes can be found with this formula: ${\displaystyle {\text{Name}}=2^{n+2}{\text{th}}}$ note, where ${\displaystyle n}$ is the number of flags on the note.

Breaks

Accidentals and key signatures

Common accidentals

Accidentals modify the pitch of the notes that follow them on the same staff position within a measure, unless cancelled by an additional accidental.

Key signatures

Key signatures define the prevailing key of the music that follows, thus avoiding the use of accidentals for many notes. If no key signature appears, the key is assumed to be C major/A minor, but can also signify a neutral key, employing individual accidentals as required for each note. The key signature examples shown here are described as they would appear on a treble staff.

Quarter tones

The vast majority of Western music is written and played in 12 equal temperament; as such, there is no universally accepted notation for microtonal music, with varying systems being used depending on the situation. A common notation for quarter tones involves writing the fraction 1/4 next to an arrow pointing up or down. Below are other forms of notation:

In 19 equal temperament, where a whole tone is divided into three steps instead of two, music is typically notated in a way that flats and sharps are not usually enharmonic (thus a C♯ represents a third of a step lower than D♭); this has the advantage of not requiring any nonstandard notation.

Time signatures

Time signatures define the meter of the music. Music is "marked off" in uniform sections called bars or measures, and time signatures establish the number of beats in each. This does not necessarily indicate which beats to emphasize, however, so a time signature that conveys information about the way the piece actually sounds is thus chosen. Time signatures tend to suggest prevailing groupings of beats or pulses.

Note relationships

Dynamics

Dynamics are indicators of the relative intensity or volume of a musical line.

Other commonly used dynamics build upon these values. For example, "pianississimo" (represented as ppp meaning so softly as to be almost inaudible, and fortississimo, (fff) meaning extremely loud. In some European countries, use of the loudest dynamics has been strongly discouraged as endangering the hearing of the performers. A small "s" in front of the dynamic notations means "subito", and means that the dynamic is to change to the new notation rapidly. Subito is commonly used with sforzandos, but all other notations, most commonly as "sff" (subitofortissimo) or "spp" (subitopianissimo).

Another value that rarely appears is niente, which means "nothing". This may be used at the end of a diminuendo to indicate "fade out to nothing".

¹ Dynamics with 3 letters (i.e., ppp & fff) are often referred to by adding an extra "iss" (pianissimo to pianississimo). This is improper Italian and would translate literally to "softerer" in English, but acceptable as a musical term; such a dynamic can also be described as molto pianissimo or molto fortissimo in somewhat more proper Italian.

Articulation marks

Articulations (or accents) specify how to perform individual notes within a phrase or passage. They can be fine-tuned by combining more than one such symbol over or under a note. They may also appear in conjunction with phrasing marks listed above.

Ornaments

Ornaments modify the pitch pattern of individual notes.

Octave signs

8va and 15ma are sometimes abbreviated further to 8 and 15. When they appear below the staff, the word bassa is sometimes added.

Repetition and codas

Instrument-specific notation

Guitar

The guitar has a fingerpicking notation system derived from the names of the fingers in Spanish or Latin. They are written above, below, or beside the note to which they are attached. They read as follows:

Piano

Pedal marks

Pedal marks appear in music for instruments with sustain pedals, such as the piano, vibraphone and chimes.

Other piano notation

Old (pre-1940) tutors published in the UK may use "English fingering". + for thumb, then 1 (index), 2 (middle), 3 (ring) and 4 (little).

Stringed instruments

(With the exception of harp)

Four-mallet percussion

Six-mallet percussion

Numbers for six-mallet percussion may be reversed as well.