How to Read Musical Phrases
Being able to read musical phrases is the foundation of a musical education. Modern musical notation allows a composer to write down the details of a song so that a musician can reproduce the notes, the tempo and the phrasing as the composer intended them. The system is fairly simple, but being able to sight read without thinking about every note is difficult.
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Instructions
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Learn about the treble and bass staff. A musical score is divided into two staffs of five lines, the treble on the top and the bass on the bottom. Each line and space has a different note in order. Beginning with the bottom, the five lines of the bass staff are G, B, D, F and A, and the four spaces are A, C, E and G. The five lines on the treble staff are E, G, B, D and F and the four spaces are F, A, C and E. Right in between the two staffs is middle C.
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Learn about the notes and rests. A note shows you the duration of a musical tone, whereas a rest shows you the duration of a break between tones. Notes and rests are like fractions, each being half as long as the one before it. So a quarter note takes half as long to play as a half note, which takes half as long to play as a whole note. Notes come in whole, half, quarter, eighth, 16th and sometimes even 32nd or 64th, but those are rare.
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Learn about time signatures and measures. A musical phrase is broken up into measures, and the measures are governed by a time signature. The time signature tells you how many beats each measure has and what sort of note counts as a single beat. For example, a 3/4 time signature has three quarter notes per measure. A 3/8 time signature would have three eighth notes every measure.
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Learn about accents, crescendos and diminuendos. An accent is a small sideways chevron over a note. It means to play that note louder than the other notes around it. A crescendo looks like a much longer accent over several notes, with the narrow part at the left and the wide part at the right. It means to gradually increase the volume over those notes. A diminuendo is like a backwards crescendo, and indicates that you should decrease the volume over several notes.
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Learn about dynamics. Musical phrases have several letters and combinations of letters to indicate volume. The quietest one normally used is pp, which stands for pianissimo, meaning very quiet. Then comes piano (p), mezzo-piano (mp), mezzo-forte (mf), forte (f) and the loudest, fortissimo (ff).
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