MUSIC 120 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Key Signature, Semitone
10 Apr 2018
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F): semitone is used when the letter name stays the same for both pitches, whole steps: another distance we can see on the keyboard is a whole step. A whole step is the same distance as two half steps. This means that one key on the piano keyboard is skipped when moving a whole step away from a particular pitch. If the pitches are played separately in the order of lower to higher, we would call this an ascending step. If the order of the pitches goes from higher to lower, this is a descending step. This holds true for whole or half steps: half and whole steps on the staff, always keep in mind the image of a piano. Nothing about the way pitches are written on the staff indicated that they are not all the same distance apart: sharps: a sharp is a symbol that looks like a hashtag.
