Music Theory Basics

What this quiz asks

• How many lines make up a standard modern musical staff, or stave?
• The swirling symbol at the start of this score is a treble clef. Which note does its inner curl mark?
• How many semitones make up one octave?
• Which major key has no sharps or flats in its key signature?
• A major scale follows the step pattern tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone.
• How many quavers (eighth notes) last as long as one semibreve (whole note)?
• Select ALL of these notes that make up a C major triad.
• Does a dot placed right after a note make it last half as long again?
• What does the Italian marking ritardando ask a musician to do?
• What word describes two notes that are written differently but sound the same, such as C♯ and D♭?
• In standard notation, a sharp written before a note also applies to later notes of the same pitch in that bar.
• Order these intervals from smallest to largest.
• Moving clockwise round the circle of fifths from C major, which key comes next?
• Select ALL of these time signatures that are compound metres.
• What name is given to the fifth note of a scale, and to the chord built on it?
• Each book of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier has a prelude and fugue in every major and minor key. How many pairs per book?
• Which interval spans exactly three whole tones and was nicknamed the devil in music?
• In a major scale, what is the seventh note, a semitone below the tonic, called?
• Guido of Arezzo named the notes ut, re, mi… after the opening syllables of a hymn to which saint?
• Which orchestral instrument normally reads its music in the clef that places middle C on the middle line of the staff?