Shape Note

Shape Note

Shape notes are a music notation designed to facilitate congregational and community singing. The notation, introduced in 1801, became a popular teaching device in American singing schools. Shapes were added to the note heads in written music to help singers find pitches within major and minor scales without the use of more complex information found in key signatures on the staff.

Shape notes of various kinds have been used for over two centuries in a variety of music traditions, mostly sacred but also secular, originating in New England, practiced primarily in the Southern region of the United States for many years, and now experiencing a renaissance in other locations as well.

Read more about Shape Note:  Shape Notes, Four-shape Vs. Seven-shape Systems, Effectiveness of Shape Notes, Origin and Early History, Rise of Seven-shape Systems, Currently Active Shape Note Traditions, Nomenclature

Famous quotes containing the words shape and/or note:

    We cannot shape our children according to our ideas,
    We must keep and love them as God gave them to us.
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)

    Alexander Woollcott broadcasts the story of the wife who returned a dog to the Seeing Eye with this note attached: “I am sending the dog back. My husband used to depend on me. Now he is independent, and I never know where he is.”
    —For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)