How to Learn About Music Notes

Musical notes look complicated, but tell the musician how to play the piece.

If you want to read music, you need to learn about musical notes and how they work. Each note on a musical staff can be read, and it tells the musician important things about its pitch and length.

Things You'll Need

• Musical instrument
• Metronome or virtual metronome

Instructions

Pitch

1. 

   The upper clef is treble, and the lower is bass.

   Read the type of clef your music uses. Higher-pitched instruments often use the treble clef, which is curly. The bass clef for lower-pitched instruments looks like a backwards C with two dots.

2. Label the staff with the notes of the clef in pencil. Most musicians label the notes from the bottom to the top. The spaces between the lines on a treble clef are labeled "F," "A," "C," and "E." The lines, from the bottom and the top, are "E," "G," "B," "D," and "F." The bass clef lines are "G," "B," "D," "F," and "A," and the spaces are "A," "C," "E," "G."

3. Play scales to learn how the notes sound on your instrument. Play each note from the bottom to the top, and then to the bottom again. For example, if you have a flute, play (low) "E," "F," "G," "A," "B," "C," "D," high "E," and "F." Then play the notes backward.

4. Label the notes on a piece of music and play them in order.

Length

1. Set the metronome to about 100 beats per minute (bpm).

2. Mark in pencil the measures on the staff. Between groups of notes, there is a vertical line. The group of notes between two lines is called a "measure."

3. Read the "time signature," the two numbers stacked on top of each other next to the clef. Most pieces of music are in "4/4" time. This means that each measure has four beats in it.

4. Tap your foot in time to the metronome. Count four beats on the metronome.

5. Play a whole note, which is represented on the music staff by a hollow circle. Play a note on your instrument for four whole beats.

6. Play a note for two beats. This is a half-note, represented as an open circle with a vertical tail.

7. Play a note for one beat. A closed circle with a vertical tail is a quarter note, which is a single beat.

8. 

   An eighth note has a "flag" coming from the top.

   Listen to the metronome and count the four beats as "one, and, two, and, three, and, four, and." Each one of those syllables is a half-beat. Play a note for a half-beat to play an eighth note. On the staff this looks like a closed circle with the vertical tail and a flag.

9. Play two notes during a half-beat to play a 16th note. They are represented as an eighth note with two flags on the tail, and are usually played in groups.

References

• Data Dragon: Clefs
• Read Sheet Music: The Basics of Reading Music
• Thinkquest Library: Music Theory

Resources

• Metronome Online