Learn How To Read Music

If you want to learn how to read music or understand those buttons on your beat machine first you need to understand the terms of music.  Once you know terms like staff, grand staff, treble clef, bass clef, key signature and time signature you will be on your way. 

Of course you also need to know note values and a few other ideas.  Beyond that reading is a matter of consistent practice.  Really there is not much to it, most of us make it harder than it really is.

Like reading a book in English, music is a language with its rules.  When you know the rules it is just a matter of time before you are a good reader.

So here is your first lesson to learn how to read music.

The Staff

The staff is the five lines on the music paper.  It looks like this:

Each line or space is a music note.  Just like a letter in the alphabet.  Simple right…

A sheet of music paper is called staff paper.  There are basically two types of staff paper.  Staff paper where each staff is separate and staff paper where two staff’s are connected into a “Grand Staff”.

If you play the piano you would use a Grand Staff because you can play several octaves at any time.  A Grand Staff looks like this:

You can see that it is two staffs ties together.  The top is the treble clef and the bottom is the bass clef.

The Clef's

The first thing you see on any staff is clef. There are several clefs but I will only be talking about two types.

The Treble Clef

Its job is to tell you where the note G above Middle C is.  Do you see the swirl around the second line of the staff?  That note is G above Middle C.  It is also known as the G- Clef.

The symbol on the left is what the Treble Clef or G-Clef looks like.

The Bass Clef

Also known as the F-Clef, its job is to tell the reader where the F below middle C is.  Can you start to see the importance of Middle C?

The symbol on the left is what the Bass Clef or F-Clef looks like.

Below is a picture that illustrates the notes of the staff as well as how they relate to a piano keyboard.

Next you need to know the rest of the notes of the music staff and how to remember them.

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