🎼 Chant and Guido

In early Christian churches, people sang prayers to simple melodies called chant. For hundreds of years, singers learned every chant by ear, copying their teachers. Imagine memorising hundreds of songs with no music to read!

Neumes?👶?: little memory marks

Around 1,100 to 1,200 years ago, monks began writing little marks called neumes?👶? above the words. Neumes showed if the melody went up or down, but not exactly how far. They helped singers remember songs they already knew. Look at the Atelier Zuber logo: those little black shapes on lines are neumes!

Guido of Arezzo

Guido was an Italian monk and music teacher. He was born around 991 or 992 and was still alive after 1033, but we don't know exactly when he died. Guido used lines to show exactly how high each note was. Other people had tried lines before, but Guido made the idea clear and popular. This is the great-grandparent of the staff we read today!

Ut, re, mi

Guido taught singers with a hymn called Ut queant laxis. Each line of the hymn starts one note higher, on the syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. Much later, ut was changed to do, which is easier to sing, and si (or ti) was added for the seventh note.