Music Basics

Music is defined as “the art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.”...

Reading music might feel as daunting initially as first learning how to read a book; it is, after all, a new language. By taking careful steps, though, you will be able to understand and...

Whether playing high-speed classical pieces, racing through rock solos or jamming with a jazz group, using memorized scales is imperative. The proverbial "How do I get to Carnegie Hall? (Practice,...

Baritone music covers a range that straddles both the bass and treble clefs, but it is mainly written on the higher portion of the bass clef. Because most music students are taught to read treble...

A musical scale is a group of notes arranged in a specific pattern of steps (or distance between each note) to make a set of tones grouped into what musicians refer to as a key signature. The key...

Music notes are the language musicians use to speak to one another. A music notes consists of three elements that dictate tone, pitch and duration; a note head, stem and tail. These notes, when...

Structural notes are the tones in a melodic passage which comprise the basis of the melody. Without them a melody would not be recognizable. Students of music theory learn to identify structural...

You don't need to be born with perfect pitch to hear music notes. Learning to hear notes and recognize the names of those notes takes time and practice. It may be that you never develop perfect...

Reading music can be intimidating to many people. But once you get started, you'll see how easy it is. After learning the basics, everything will click into place and you'll be reading Beethoven's...

If you want to play thirds and sixths on the keyboard or piano, you should learn them together. There are two types of thirds and sixths, major and minor. If you learn both the theory and the feel...

Making a pentatonic scale with water bottles is a great project to try with kids or other beginning musicians. The pentatonic scale is especially suitable for this project because so many of the...

In order to read music proficiently, you must learn how to read notes and how many beats each carries. The number of beats per note depends on the time signature. The bottom number of the time...

Chords are the building blocks of music, but there are hundreds of possible chord combinations available. One look at a chord dictionary for piano and organ can be overwhelming. You might think it...

The ability to read jazz music notation is a skill necessary to any serious trombone player. Reading jazz music is really no different than reading other types of music, such as the concert band...

The cool thing about guitars is that the scales are the same, no matter where you are on the guitar. Guitar scales use octaves on the strings preceding each other to keep the shapes the same and...

Music theory tells us how the notes in our musical system work together. A thorough understanding of music theory isn't essential for anyone who wishes to play an instrument or compose songs, but...

Written music uses a time signature and a system of notes that indicate beats. Composers use these beats in various combinations to fill bars with the appropriate number of beats indicated by the...

Musical notation features music notes that consist of two elements. Those elements are note heads and note stems. he various combinations of these heads and stems tell musicians the names of the...

Many drummers feel it isn't necessary to learn how to read drum notes, preferring instead to rely on their ears and sense of rhythm and timing to carry them through. This is particularly true of...

There are several methods available to learn how to play the piano, and how to approach learning chords. This is one method that will help get you started.

Music, as an art form and medium, is common to every human culture and society. According to its notes, chords, tempos and lyrics, it is capable of deeply affecting a person's mood and emotions....

As a novice pianist, you're probably looking for some easy sheet music. Fortunately, there are plenty of songs that you can play with only your right hand. These songs will help teach you the...

Most everybody understands music in its finished form. Before music gets to that point, however, it starts with a system called music notation. This is the language musicians use to write down...

Scales are defined as groupings of musical notes that are arranged in descending or ascending order. There are a variety of musical scales used in music, and classical music is no different. ...

One of the most expressive ways of singing or playing an instrument is through using legato. However, legato playing can be difficult if it is not approached in the correct way. In essence, legato...

Ear training exercises help students and budding musicians to develop and perfect pitch, rhythm and harmony. Clef and note recognition are essential music fundamentals that need to be introduced...

Sheet music contains the written patterns of sound contained in music. Each symbol on the page represents either the duration of a sound or how the sound should be played. Many instruments have...

Knowing the musical notes is a great thing to know, however there are allot of musicians who don't know music notes and are big stars so basically when you play the keyboard instead of looking at...

A scale is a set of notes that can be played in ascending or descending order. Scales are built from the twelve chromatic notes in music and arranged in scale steps (distance between any two...

Rhythm in written music is dictated by various notes. Musicians read the notes and are able to distinguish how long the notes are played by the note heads, the presence or lack of a note flag, the...

I'm teach you guys read music notes ... treble clef bass clef and whole notes all that!

Learning to read music isn't that hard to understand. There are 7 notes to learn and basically it's the notes that build upon each other to form chords. The notes are A, B, C, D, E, F, and G....

A note is a symbol used to write down music, just as letters are used to write down words. The music is written on a staff of five lines, each note on the staff representing a tone. The type of...

Music improvisation is the act of making up your musical part as you go. The ability to improvise comes from being able to hear musical keys and knowing what notes will fit within those keys. This...

The chromatic scale is the foundation of all music based on the the Western (European) system of music. Also referred to as the equal temperment system, as the notes are all equally spaced apart.

Obviously, learning how to play the piano solely based on an article is neither conventional nor the most effective. However, for those of you out there curious to learn and don't have the money...

The length of each musical note is represented on paper by shape and shading. Whole notes and half notes have an open circle while quarter notes, eighth notes and sixteenth notes are shaded. From...

Bebop musicians need to know how to play a lot of 16th notes and 32nd notes, as well as chromatic notes outside of the scale. Discover the basic philosophy behind playing bebop runs in B with help...

The ability to read music is an important skill when learning to sing or to play a musical instrument. Every pitch has a unique placement that distinguishes it from other musical notes.

Musical notation is the language through which musicians communicate with one another. Our modern system of music notation has been used since the European Classical Era, and is now the most...

A chord is composed of two or more notes. A chord can be played in unison, with all of the notes played at once, or it can be played one note at a time, which is called a broken chord. A...

The first step for most people interested in music is to learn to read notes. Some learn by ear, which means they are able to play songs without reading notes. Even for the most talented...

Learning to read ABC music, or music that is written on a staff, is a fairly simple process. All it takes is a little time and you will soon find yourself reading sheet music with ease.

A music score will tell you everything you need to know in order to play or sing a piece of music, as well as some background information. You must be able to read music to interpret the notes and...

Guitar tablature is a form of notation some guitar players prefer. Tablature, also known as tab, is written specifically for the guitar using a graph of six lines that represent the six strings on...

Musical notation is the universal language of musicians. No matter where you come from, you can communicate with your musical peers if you can read and write standard musical notation. Here's how...

Musical notation is the language of musicians. Unlike other forms of language, it is universal. A musician in any part of the world can read and understand musical notations written by a musician...

Staring at a page of blank sheet music, wondering where to start? Never fear---these easy steps will get you started in the world of musical notation, whether you can already play or sing music by...

A piano is a keyboard instrument with 88 keys that span about seven octaves, with the keys repeating the musical alphabet. The white keys represent natural notes, and the black keys represent...

Reading 16th note rests on drum sheet music for the eighth notes is important for every drummer to be able to play any piece of music with little to no practice. Read and play simple drum beats...