The treble clef is a symbol of art and a dubious tattoo

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The treble clef in its usual form appeared in the sixteenth century, when instrumental music was born. But its prehistory began at the turn of the first and second millennium of our era. Then the Benedictine monk Guido from the city of Arezzo in the Italian province of Tuscany figured out how to record music using notes. A symbol had to be invented to represent the sound.

The notes in their current style are the sole merit of Guido d'Arezzo. After him, the music recording system improved, but it was this monk who laid the foundations. At the beginning of the line, he wrote down in Latin letters the note with which the melody began. The letter G, denoting the note "sol", served as a prototype for the treble clef.

What is its function? Eleven musical signs can be placed on the five rulers of the stave. The treble clef indicates on which line (second from the bottom) the “s alt” of the first octave is located. The range of notes located on these five rulers when notated with a treblekey is sufficient for most musical instruments. However, this is not suitable for everyone. There are instruments of very low and, on the contrary, very high sounding. If you record a melody for them, you will have to apply additional rulers. They can be below or above. When reading a melody from a sheet, this is very inconvenient. In order to record music for different instruments, the treble clef turned out to be of little use. Therefore, several more signs of this kind were invented. These are bass, alto, tenor and some other clefs.

What is the difference between them? The bass clef indicates where the note "fa" of the small (next down from the first) octave is located. It is in the second line from the top. The baritone is slightly higher than the bass, so the baritone clef places the same note on the middle bar. The alto symbol places the note “to” of the first octave on the same line. Why is this happening? The fact is that the alto is higher than the baritone or tenor.

In total, eleven keys are currently used in practice. In the past, there were much more of them, but in the process of development of this type of art, most of them disappeared as unnecessary. To record the highest (in the musical sense) sound, a soprano or treble clef is used. He places the C note of the first octave on the first line from the bottom.

The treble clef is also not suitable for recording parts of percussion musical instruments. For this, a special “neutral” symbol is used. Indeed, for percussion instruments, the concept of pitch does not mean anything. The main thing here is rhythm and volume. He enrolls inin two versions. In the first case, these are two thick parallel vertical lines, resting with their ends against the second and fourth lines of the stave, and in the second, an elongated rectangle, slightly not reaching the extreme lines.

The popularity of the treble clef as a musical symbol even caused a fashion for a tattoo. Among musicians, he is considered the personification of creativity and indicates that the owner of a fashionable tattoo belongs to people of art. But on the “zone” the “treble clef” tattoo can have a completely different meaning. She will bring a lot of trouble to a person who imprudently made himself a tattoo in the form of this musical symbol. As a rule, it is impaled on homosexuals.

However, the opinion of the criminal community regarding this tattoo is not completely settled. Therefore, depending on the place of application and graphic nuances, a treble clef can also mean that its owner led a cheerful, wild life in the wild. However, the price of a mistake in this case is too high, so more and more inmates of places of detention prefer not to mess with a dubious tattoo.