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Reading music
Now that you’re familiar with the staff, you need to learn how you read the notes on it. A typical piece of notation
might look like this:
Don’t worry about the shape of the notes or any of the structure right now, that will be dealt with in Part 4 of this
lesson. You can see from the example above that each note, represented by a black oval with a line attached, falls
either on a line or on a space. These lines and spaces each represent a note, or a pitch. Notes are described using
letters, starting from A and going to G. After reaching G, the notes repeat. This is because A to G represents one
note short of what is known as an octave (group of eight) The notes on the scale repeat every eight notes, but one
octave higher. Look at the example below:
This is a scale, called C Major. It begins on C in both clefs (one line below the first line on the treble clef,
and the first space on the bass clef) and goes like so: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. The last note on this scale is the
same as the first, merely a higher pitch. This is perhaps better illustrated here:
Most anyone is familiar with the keys of a piano, even if they are not familiar with how the instrument is played.
For the latter, every key on Piano represents a unique pitch, but the notes repeat every octave. Here you can see
the scale pictured above which we have already looked at, starting and ending on C. The C the scale begins on is
called middle C, because it falls almost in the middle of the piano. Octaves above or below are often written
numerically, thus the scale above starts on middle C, and goes to C1. Had we gone the opposite way, we would have
begun on middle C and ended on C-1. More often than not, the octaves are not written at all, as any C will do in a
pinch and it depends primarily on which C you want to play. However for our own convenience we will use the above
convention in the lessons to follow.
Now that you know the rudiments of how the notes are read, there remains only to learn what each line or space is.
You may have noticed that we covered every line and every space between C0 and C1 on the staff, but on the keyboard
we skipped every black key. The black keys obviously represent the pitches between the white keys, but there is
nowhere left for them on the staff. This is due to the key which we played the scale in. We’ll deal more with
scales later, suffice to say that depending on the scale you play in, lines and spaces will not represent every
note, so when a note is desired outside the key, you use either a sharp (#) or a flat (b), meaning either one note
above (on he keyboard, not the staff) or one note below the note written. Thus the full scale (or chromatic scale)
from C0 to C1 would be C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B, C. As an example and as practice, try reading the
following notes. They are connected to the corresponding notes on the keyboard. If you need help, consult the
charts above.
Now here are the note names written above the notes themselves? Did you get them right? If so, you’ve grasped the
rudiments of note reading. There are other forms of notation written for specific instruments, however the notation
used above can be used for any instrument, tonal or percussive, so there is no reason to look at tablature, chord
charts, or other means. However, if you choose to specialize in one instrument you may want to learn the notation
used for that instrument.
Learned this material? Take the quiz and finalize it!.
Continue to Part 4
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