How to Read Music
Posted on January 1st, 2009 by monsterguide
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So you want to read music? It sounds very complex, and people give up without even trying to find out what it involves. They think it is too difficult for them. But the basic concepts of reading music can be understood quite easily with minimal effort. Remember how you learned a new language in your childhood? You will feel the same way when you learn to read music. But as you get accustomed to musical notation, reading music will become as simple as eating a banana. However, you must be strongly motivated to learn.
This article doesn’t promise that you learn how to read music immediately. But if you persevere, one day you may find yourself effortlessly playing a guitar or a flute.
Start learning to read music with a predetermined goal, like playing a guitar and winning the admiration of your friends or joining a choir at the local church. A goal will help you ignore the initial discomfort and motivate you to learn the new skill. The first step is to identify the instrument you would like to play.
Music is characterized by pleasing arrangements of sounds with respect to pitch, tone, and rhythm. Pitch is the frequency at which a note vibrates, tone is the type of sound (for example, a flute emits a mellow tone, whereas drums are aggression personified), and rhythm conveys a strong sense of forward movement.
Sound is the result of molecular vibrations, and air is the medium that transmits it. Sound cannot exist without a medium. Sound travels as waves. Frequency is the rate of change of vibrations with time and determines the pitch of the sound.
Music is written on a music sheet. In contemporary music sheets, music is written on either treble clef staff or bass clef staff (clef is a musical symbol placed at the beginning of the staff; it establishes the letter names of the lines and spaces). The treble clef has notes higher in pitch than those of the bass clef. In pianos there is a wide range of notes.
A staff consists of five horizontal lines and four spaces between the lines. The pitches are named after the first seven letters of the English alphabets (A, B, C, D, E, F, and G).
One should be able to distinguish between the durations of notes. Each note may have a specific length, and each note has a specific symbol assigned to it. The different kinds of notes are the full note, half note, the quarter note, the eighth note, and the sixteenth note. Rarely do we see the 32nd, 64th, and 128th notes. A full note means 1/1 of the length of a 4/4 bar, a half note means 1/2 of the length of 4/4, and so on.
A beginner should try and concentrate on small sections of a piece and master them first before trying to play from start to finish.
Notes are given names based on their pitch. On treble clef, the notes that fall on the lines in ascending order are E G B D F. The notes in the empty spaces between the lines are F A C E in ascending order. On bass clef the notes’ names are shifted down two notes. The notes on the lines in ascending order are G B D F A. The notes in the empty spaces are A C E G in ascending order.
This much information should be sufficient to put you on the road to learning how to read music. If you are motivated strongly enough, you can probably read this article and go to a music teacher, armed with a basic understanding of concepts such as note and pitch. In all likelihood, you will soon become an expert music reader and player.
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