Learn To Read Music

Today when most people learn to read music they’re thinking they want to be able to play their favorite tune and not in terms of music as a collection of notes played in a predetermined sequence in order to produce a melody.  Several notes played simultaneously make up underlying chords that go along with the melody line.

Notes, as we know them today, got their start in classical music.  The masters like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart etc were the fathers, if you will, of our modern music.  This way of placing notes on a page referred to as music notation is used worldwide today.  If you want to learn to read music you’ll find that the standard for most music follows this format.

The system uses a very structured way of organizing the music composition so that any musician, following these well established protocols, can reproduce the music as envisioned by the composer in very close approximation to the intended sound.

While this site is primarily set up to review courses that teach you the knowledge base of how to learn music the following is a brief discussion to introduce the topic.

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When you first learn to read music you learn that it typically uses a 5 line staff.  Individual notes are placed either on a line of the staff or in a space between two lines on the staff. 

Each note represents a tone that is calibrated from a reference of A440.  What that means is that the note “A” vibrates at 440 cycles per second.  Other notes are represented by less or more cycles per second.

For more information on How To Read Music Notes see page 2 of our discussion on Learn to Read Music

A 5 line staff can only accommodate a part of the useable spectrum of notes possible.  By useable we typically mean notes that we can hear or enjoy hearing. A human ear typically is actually able to hear up to around 20,000 cycles per second.  Useable music doesn’t go nearly that high because it is not a pleasant sound.  For example, the maximum high range of a piccolo is typically a “C”.  This particular “C” sounds at 4186 cycles per second.

On the lower end of the spectrum the human ear can hear down to around 20 cycles per second which is so low that you ‘feel’ it more than perceptibly hear it.  You’ve heard the low base note that seem to pulse from some boom boxes or THAT car that sort of ‘booms’ down the road and can be heard long before you see it.

So, long story short, we clip off the possible notes on either end of the hearing spectrum and give them a place on a staff so when you learn to read music these are the select notes you learn. 

Well, actually we put them on two staffs.

When you stack one staff on top of another it’s called a great or grand staff.  

The high notes (treble clef —note the curlyque symbol) hang out on the upper staff

The low notes reside on the bottom (bass clef—note the symbol that looks somewhat like a backwards “C”).

Once you have the clef symbols placed on the grand staff the notes are then placed in the appropriate location on the great staff based on the number of cycles they produce and are read from left to right. 

 Treble Clef Notes

Bass Clef Notes 

If it is desired that the song be in a particular key then tiny little notes are placed just to the right of the clef symbols.  These indicate what notes are sharp or flat, hence the title “key signature.”   In the example to the right the note “B” is flat.  This is the key signature for F Major or D minor.

Following the key signature is the time signature. Measures (bars) divide the piece into groups of beats, and the time signatures specify those groupings.

Now bringing it all together from the excerpt below from Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze:

You have a great or grand staff with bass and treble clefs represented.  There is one flat note “B” which indicates this piece is in the key of F Major (a concept beyond the scope of this article).  The time signature is 4/4 which basically means that there are 4 beats to a measure (a measure is the area between two vertical lines running between the treble and bass clef staffs) and that a quarter note gets 1 beat.  

As you progress and learn to read music at advanced levels you find that  instructions to the musician regarding issues such as style, tempo and dynamics are added above or below the staff.   In this case the word “Recitativo” refers to a style of delivery (much used in operas, oratorios, and cantatas through which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech.  The Dynamics are dictated by the “mp” (standing for mezzo-piano, meaning “moderately soft”), the “mf” (standing for mezzo-forte, meaning “moderately loud”), and “dim” (diminuendo, sometimes abbreviated to decresc., meaning “get gradually softer”).

Other methods of music notation include:

Percussion notation:  

Figured bass notation: 

Lead sheets:

Chart notation:   

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