How to Read Sheet Music: Channel Your

Inner Musician with These Simple Steps!

Have you ever heard a song on the radio and thought, Hey, itd be really cool to know how to play
that.? Do you have friends who play musical instruments, and you want to get in on the fun? Do
you just want to expand your general artistic knowledge? Well, learning the basics of how to read
sheet music can help you achieve all of these, and in a shorter amount of time than you might
have thought!
At its very simplest, music is a language just like youd read aloud from a book. The symbols youll
see on pages of sheet music have been used for hundreds of years. And they represent the pitch,
speed and rhythm of the song they convey, as well as expression and techniques used by a
musician to play the piece. Think of the notes as the letters, the measures as the words, the
phrases as the sentences and so forth. Learning to read music really does open up a whole new
world to explore!
Follow our step-by-step introduction to the language of music below, download your FREE tools at
the end of this article, and youll be playing along in no time at all.

Step 1: Learn the Basic Symbols of Notation

Music is made up of a variety of symbols, the most basic of which are the staff, the clefs and the
notes. All music contains these fundamental components, and in order to learn how to read music,
you must first familiarize yourself with these basics.

The Staff
The staff consists of five lines and four spaces. Each of those lines and each of those spaces
represents a different letter, which in turn represents a note. Those lines and spaces represent
notes named A-G, and the note sequence moves alphabetically up the staff.

Treble Clef
There are two main clefs with which to familiarize yourself; the first is a treble clef. The treble clef
has the ornamental letter G on the far left side. The Gs inner swoop encircles the G line on the
staff. The treble clef notates the higher registers of music, so if your instrument has a higher pitch,
such as a flute, violin or saxophone, your sheet music is written in the treble clef. Higher notes on
a keyboard also are notated on the treble clef.

We use common mnemonics to remember the note names for the lines and spaces of the treble
clef. For lines, we remember EGBDF by the word cue Every Good Boy Does Fine. Similarly for
the spaces, FACE is just like the word face.

Bass Clef
The line between the two bass clef dots is the F line on the bass clef staff, and its also referred to
as the F clef. The bass clef notates the lower registers of music, so if your instrument has a lower
pitch, such as a bassoon, tuba or cello, your sheet music is written in the bass clef. Lower notes on
your keyboard also are notated in the bass clef.

A common mnemonic to remember note names for the lines of the bass clef is: GBDFA Good
Boys Do Fine Always. And for the spaces: ACEG, All Cows Eat Grass.

Notes
Notes placed on the staff tell us which note letter to play on our instrument and how long to play it.
There are three parts of each note, the note head, the stem and the flag.

Every note has a note head, either filled (black) or open (white). Where the note head sits on the
staff (either on a line or a space) determines which note you will play. Sometimes, note heads will
sit above or below the five lines and four spaces of a staff. In that case, a line is drawn through the
note, above the note or below the note head, to indicate the note letter to play, as in the B and C
notes above.
The note stem is a thin line that extends either up or down from the note head. The line extends
from the right if pointing upward or from the left if pointing downward. The direction of the line
doesnt affect how you play the note, but serves as a way to make the notes easier to read while
allowing them to fit neatly on the staff. As a rule, any notes at or above the B line on the staff have
downward pointing stems, those notes below the B line have upward pointing stems.
The note flag is a curvy mark to the right of the note stem. Its purpose is to tell you how long to
hold a note. Well see below how a single flag shortens the notes duration, while multiple flags can
make it shorter still.

Now that you know the parts to each note, well take a closer look at those filled and open note
heads discussed above. Whether a note head is filled or open shows us the notes value, or how
long that note should be held. Start with a closed note head with a stem. Thats our quarter note,
and it gets one beat. An open note head with a stem is a half note, and it gets two beats. An open
note that looks like an o without a stem is a whole note, and it gets held for four beats.

There are other ways to extend the length of a note. A dot after the note head, for example, adds
another half of that notes duration to it. So, a half note with a dot would equal a half note and a
quarter note; a quarter note with a dot equals a quarter plus an eighth note. A tie may also be
used to extend a note. Two notes tied together should be held as long as the value of both of those
notes together, and ties are commonly used to signify held notes that cross measures or bars.

The opposite may also happen, we can shorten the amount of time a note should be held, relative
to the quarter note. Faster notes are signified with either flags, like the ones discussed above, or
with beams between the notes. Each flag halves the value of a note, so a single flag signifies 1/2
of a quarter note, a double flag halves that to 1/4 of a quarter note, et cetera. Beams do the same,
while allowing us to read the music more clearly and keep the notation less cluttered. As you can
see, theres no difference in how you count the eighth and 16th notes above.
But what happens when there isnt a note taking up each beat? Its easy, we take a rest! A rest,
just like a note, shows us how long it should be held based on its shape.

Step 2: Pick Up the Beat

In order to play music, you need to know its meter, the beat you use when dancing, clapping or
tapping your foot along with a song. When reading music, the meter is presented similar to a
fraction, with a top number and a bottom number, we call this the songs time signature. The top
number tells you how many beats to a measure, the space of staff in between each vertical line
(called a bar). The bottom number tells you the note value for a single beat, the pulse your foot
taps along with while listening.

In the example above, the time signature is 4/4, meaning there are 4 beats per bar and that every
quarter note gets one beat.
In the example below, the time signature is 3/4, meaning there are 3 beats per bar and that every
quarter note gets one beat.

Lets look again at the above examples, notice that even though the 4/4 time signature in Twinkle,
Twinkle Little Star calls for 4 beats per bar, there arent 4 notes in second bar? Thats because
you have two quarter notes and one half note, which added together equal 4 beats.
In addition to your note values and time signature, the last piece to feeling the rhythm is knowing
your tempo, or beats per minute. Tempo tells you how fast or slow a piece is intended to be
played, and often is shown at the top of a piece of sheet music. A tempo of, say 60 BPM (beats
per minute) would mean youd play 60 of the signified notes every minute or a single note every
second. Likewise, a tempo of 120 would double the speed at 2 notes every second. You may also
see Italian words like Largo, Allegro or Presto at the top of your sheet music, which signify
common tempos. Musicians use a tool, called a metronome, to help them keep tempo while
practicing a new piece.

Step 3: Play a Melody

Congratulations, youre almost on your way to reading music! First, lets look at scales. A scale is
made of eight consecutive notes, for example, the C major scale is composed of C, D, E, F, G, A,
B, C. The interval between the first note of your C major scale and the last is an example of
an octave. The C major scale is very important to practice, since once you have the C scale down,
the other major scales will start to fall into place. Each of the notes of a C major scale corresponds
with a white key on your keyboard. Heres how a C major scale looks on a staff and how that
corresponds to the keys on your keyboard:

Youll notice that as the notes ascend the staff, and move to the right on your keyboard, the pitch of
the notes gets higher. But, what about the black keys? Musically, whole tones, or whole steps
between the note letters, would limit the sounds were able to produce on our instruments. Lets
consider the C major scale you just learned to play. The distance between the C and the D keys in
your C scale is a whole step, however the distance between the E and the F keys in your C scale
is a half step. Do you see the difference? The E and the F keys dont have a black key in between
them, thus theyre just a half step away from one another. Every major scale youll play on a
keyboard has the same pattern, whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half. There are many other

types of scales, each with unique sounds, like minor scales, modal scales and more that youll
come across later on, but for now lets focus just on major scales and the major scale pattern.
Look at the C major scale again on the keyboard below.

Semitones, or half-steps on the keyboard, allow us to write an infinite variety of sounds into music.
Asharp, denoted by the symbol, means that note is a semitone (or half step) higher than the note
head to its right on sheet music. Conversely, a flat, denoted by a symbol, means the note is a
semitone lower than the note head to its right. Youll notice on the keyboard picture and notated
staff below, showing each half step between the C and the E notes, that whether you use the sharp
or the flat of a note depends on whether youre moving up or down the keyboard.

Theres one more symbol to learn regarding semitones, and thats the natural, denoted by a . If a
note is sharp or flat, that sharp or flat extends throughout the measure, unless theres a natural
symbol. A natural cancels a sharp or flat within a measure or a song. Heres what playing C to E
would look like with natural symbols.

Finally, in order to read music, youll need to understand key signatures. You actually already
know one key signature, the key of C! The C major scale you learned above was in the key of C.
Scales are named after their tonic, the preeminent note within the scale, and the tonic determines
what key you play in. You can start a major scale on any note, so long as you follow the wholewhole-half-whole-whole-whole-half pattern. Now, following that pattern in keys other than the key
of C will require you to use sharps and flats. Since thats the case, we place the sharps or flats for
your songs key signature right before the meter, after the clef, on your sheet music. That tells you
to maintain those sharps or flats throughout the music, unless of course theres a natural symbol to
override it. You will begin to recognize the key signatures of pieces based on what sharps or flats
are shown. Heres a quick glimpse at some key signatures using sharps and flats: