silences (silences are meaningful means of expression). In today’s practice, the common use of notes and rests, form the longest to the shortest, are designated by differently shaped signs and named accordingly in American English and British English as follows:

For the early music from mid 13^th century to about 1600, longer notes were used in the form of Mensural notation. These older notes include breve , long, large with the corresponding old names being called brevis, longa and maxims. A breve is twice as long as a whole note as its English

name semibreve for the latter suggests. The reader is reminded here that

Table 1.Common Signs of Notes and Rests and Their Names

the word note normally refers to a written symbol but the tone indicated is often implicated, though the word tone mainly means a musical sound or a whole tone. 

【 】Head, Stem, and Hook (Tail):

They are components to form the written shapes of notes. The head is necessary for notes of any time values. A whole note uses a head only that is written as a small hollow-circle ellipse or a “white head” so called by musicians. The head for a half note is similar but facing the opposite direction with a stem added on the left or right rim of the head. A solid printed or “black” head is used for notes whose time values are shorter than the half note for which a stem applied to the quarter note and a certain type of hook added on the notes shorter than the quarter note where a one-tailed hook is attached to the tip of the stem, for the eighth note, and a two-tailed hook for the sixteenth note. More tails are added to notes of shorter notes of the time values as illustrated in the table listed earlier. Referenced with the numeral notation, the number of the tails used for notes in the “five-line” staff is exactly the same as those used for notes in the numeral notation system indicating in the proportion of their values. 

According to musical notation that is an independent field of study, a note with a stem should be written side up when placed below the third line on the staff and upside down when the note is above the third line. It is so in principle to maintain a balanced sense of space in writing or printing the staff.

【 】 Dot and double dot; Dotted note and dotted rest; Tie; Pause or hold or fermata:

All of them are supplementary signs for prolonging time values of notes or rests. A dot following a note or occasionally a rest prolongs half value of the note or rest indicated. The second dot in the double dot prolongs half value further of the first dot. When more than two notes of the same pitch is to sustain without interruption between them, a tie or more ties, using the arching line “⌒” similar to that of legato, could be applied to connect them so that the notes are performed sustaining the sum of time values added up by the notes covered under the sign of tie. As an art, music does not want to restrict itself within the proportioned time values for notes and rests; a fermata thus functions well to meet the purpose which simply means to hold on the notes to the performer’s taste.

【 】Irregular grouping of notes for time values; Duplet, Triplet, Quadruplet, Quintuplet, Sextuplet, Septuplet:

To emancipate music from rigidly proportioned grouping of notes, irregular groupings are employed which effectively break the ordinary organizations for time values so that varieties are obtained. Alternations take place where the duplet substitutes for three-notes grouping, the triplet for two-notes grouping, and quadruplet, quintuplet, sextuplet, septuplet for groupings of four-notes or so. A good example can be found in the third and fifth measures of our National Anthem. The triplets produce a stirring and agitating bugling that can never be created by evenly grouped notes of eighths or sixteenths. The aesthetical principle of variety is perfectly reflected herein.

【 】Absolute pitch and relative pitch (sense of): Sight-singing, fixed-do and movable-do:

Absolute pitch, or perfect pitch, is an ability to name any musical tones immediately on hearing them or singing them without reference to hints of hearing or seeing the notes played on an instrument. This ability is in most cases achieved through early learning of musical instruments or deliberate training, but not necessarily a constituent part of traits found in musicality for musicians. It is suggested that a sense of absolute pitch, though admired by many, may sometimes become a hindrance in thinking process of key transposing. Contrary to absolute pitch, relative pitch is an ability to differentiate among intervallic tonal relationships. Though unable to name the exact (absolute) pitches heard, a person possessing the sense of relative pitch recognizes and identifies the tonal relations in the Gestaltist thinking, namely, in a way of organized perception which is, as being postulated by cognitivists－those cognition-oriented psychologists, more congruent with actual process for music in human mind. Relative pitch is a crucial trait indispensable for music learning and doing,

【 】Rhythm; Rhythmic pattern; Accent; Syncopation:

It is romantically conceived that rhythm is the skeleton of music. It is true to an extent because music is an art belonging to temporal phenomenon. Rhythm is the motion in a way of organized temporal sparse-dense structure with expressive purposes. Rhythm, structured for certain styles of expression, is oftentimes presented as a pattern called rhythmic pattern, rooted in this or that cultural and/or human causes throughout history, repeating itself through a passage or a whole piece of music, like what we know as Waltz developed from about 1800 whose rhythm is characterized most saliently by its accompaniment consisting of a low bass note on the first accented beat and

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