Five Steps To Reading Music Notes

Probably the most alien language that you will ever come across if you see it for the first time is the language of music. It's not the sound we are talking about; it's the music as it is written as notes.

Music note reading can be very frustrating especially if you don't have the time or the interest to actually try. However, music is supposed to be a universal language that is understood and welcomed by all people around the world.

So, if you are going to study music for that one great reason alone, you should practice to read notes. Here are some steps to keep in mind when you are reading a page full of music notes.

• Look for the lines – Looking at a music sheet you will notice that there are groups of five lines. This is especially common when you are reading notes written for piano.

Sometimes you will see a symbol that looks like a G or one that looks like an F. The G is known as the treble clef and the F is a bass clef. You will notice that the notes are written on the lines between the clefs and these lines are known as ledger lines.

• Know the low and high pitch – All musical notes have different values and are not the same all the time. This is where it is important to know the actual pitch of the notes. You will also need to learn how fast the note needs to be played.

Now, each of the lines that you see on a music sheet represents a note from A to G. On a treble clef, the first note is an E and the space above that line is an F, then the next line is a G. After that, notes start again from A. Thus, the notes will have different pitches as they are assigned on the sheet.

• Know the duration – Again, you need to know the speed or the duration of certain notes as you read them. Depending on the position of the note or how it is written, it can be played really quickly or drawn out. You can tell this by looking at the numbers that you see such as 4/4 or 2/2. These numbers are there to show that a musician should follow a certain beat and it also shows how fast that beat is.

• Know the notes – The next important thing is to know how the notes actually look like. This is actually quite easy. For example, a whole note looks like a large hollow oval. A half-note is hollow oval with a vertical line that is attached to its right side. A quarter note looks like solid oval with a vertical line to the side. It is whether or not the oval is hollow or filled that makes the big difference. Then there are much smaller notes that are broken down to the eighths and so on.

• Gather together – You cannot just read a note alone to make music. You need to read notes in groups so that you can come up with a tune. This is the way that musicians read notes as they go along playing the music.