Hello this is the last lesson in this series on how to read sheet music. In this lesson I will be going over the different types of notes and what they mean as well as the time signature.

To start off with this is a time signature.

There are many different times signatures but they all break down the same way. The top note tells how many beats there are in a measure. Now you are probably wondering how long is each beat. That depends on the bottom number. The number on the bottom represents a certain type of note. As shown in the diagram below.

What this diagram shows is that the number on the bottom determines the length of the beat. As you can see the picture is pretty self explanatory. The 2 represents the half note, the 4 the quarter note and the 8 the sixteenth note. That's all there is to the time signature. The top number is how many beats a measure and the bottom is how long each beat is.

Now the last thing you need to know about reading music is what each note shape means.

The diagram above has two rows. The first row shows the different types of rests. The second row is the corresponding note length. The first rest is a quarter rest, the second an eighth rest, and the last is a sixteenth rest. A rest represents a part of the beat where you the musical are not to play. The silence is only as long as the rest length. The notes below mean that you are supposed to play a note that length. The pitch of the note depends on where it is placed on a musical staff.

Now I am going to show you an example of most of the things that were covered in this tutorial. This piece of music demonstrates the different note and rest types. It uses accidentals such as sharps and flats. It has a time signature and a key signature with no sharps or flats in it. This example is the Star Wars Theme.