Tones and Semitones - Music Theory Lesson 3

Welcome to Aristia Music. Let's talk about tones and semitones. In our previous lesson, we defined a staff and demonstrated how pitch moves up and down. In this lesson, our objective is to understand what tones and semitones are and how they apply to a keyboard. Tone and semitone refers to the distance between two adjacent pitches or keys. In order to learn tones and semitones, we're going to need to take a better look at the keyboard. As you can see, the keyboard is made up of mostly white keys and some black keys. We're going to zoom in on this section of our keyboard for better understanding. Okay, so here is our reduced and zoomed in version of the keyboard. This red dot is the middle pitch key. From here, there are two ways of going onto the next pitch. On the keyboard, you can go onto the next white key, as we've been doing from the very beginning here, or you can go on to the very next black key. Yes, that's right. Today, we're going to be using the black keys in addition to the white keys, which we haven't done yet. So, whether you go to the next white or black key, there's going to be a distance that you cover by traveling from one pitch to the next or one key to the next, which is best understood by seeing the keyboard from a different point of view. Okay, so let's pretend the bottom of the keyboard does not exist. Ready? Voila! Having this new perspective on the keyboard allows us to easily identify the real adjacent keys. Now, if you're following along with the keyboard, just place your arm on the bottom of Now, from this perspective, semitones are nothing more than moving from one key to the very next key. As you can see, it will alternate from black to white, black to white. Once in a while, you get two whites right in a row, but that's pretty much what a semitone does. Now, once we come back to our original perspective of the keyboard, we see how semitones seem to zigzag from white to black We can conclude that semitones are the shortest distance between two adjacent pitches. So, basically, when you move in semitones, you're pressing every single key on the keyboard moving forward. Now, let's check out tones and how they differ. From this perspective, again, tones move from one key to the next simply by skipping one key. This means you're going to have a key in between one key and the other. Once we come back to our original perspective of the keyboard, we see how tones really move. We can conclude that tones are the distance between two adjacent pitches made up of two semitones. So, now that you know all that, key one to key two are a semitone from each other since they are right next to one another. A semitone is not always from a black key to a white key. In this example, the two white keys are adjacent to one another by a semitone. A tone covers the same distance as two semitones. Key one to key two is the first semitone. Key two to key three is the second semitone. Two semitones equal one tone. Let's practice. In this practice session, you may print out the sheet music linked in the description and pause the video in order to follow along. If not, just use your imagination. Go up one tone and one semitone from the given key. Go up three tones from the given key. Go up five semitones from the given key. Mission accomplished. Tones and semitones should be a piece of cake by now. Remember to change the perspective on the keyboard by covering the bottom half of it anytime you have doubts. In our next lesson, we will learn about accidentals. If you don't want to miss that lesson, click on the link below. If you find my videos helpful, give a like and subscribe to help me bring you more free music lessons. In the meantime, have a musical day and I'll see you in the next one.