From the category archives:

Music Notation

Piano Lessons Made Easier – How To Read Music Notes

by Tania Gleaves on September 2, 2010

One of the basic lessons of learning to play the piano involves how to read music notes. Reading music notes is like learning your ABC’s. Effectively reading music notes requires you to learn the basic parts of a music sheet; sometimes they call this song sheet.

If you look at the music sheet, you will notice that the notes are embedded on five horizontal lines with spaces in between them. This is called staff. It helps you how to read music notes correctly because each line and space represent different keys on the piano.

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blank staff Piano Lessons Made Easier   How To Read Music Notes

The symbol placed at the beginning of the staff is called clef, which serves as a guide to read the different pitches on the music sheet. There are actually two kinds of clef, one is called the treble clef and the other one is the bass clef.

treble clef

bass clef

When both clefs are put together with a vertical line, they form the so-called grand staff. These clefs play a vital role in playing the piano since both treble and bass clef shows you different notes to play together in order to produce the sweet sounding music.

grand staff

After learning the basic parts of a music sheet, the next agenda we have on how to read music notes is learning the different pitches corresponding to each line and space of the grand staff. The pitches are represented by the first seven letters of the alphabet. As mentioned earlier, these pitches correspond to different keys on your piano.

piano keys

Knowing this, how do you know whether you have to play the corresponding key or not? This is where the role of the notes comes in. There are actually five notes you can play. When these notes are placed on the grand staff, you must pay attention where they are positioned and what they look like. These notes represent different symbols which show you the duration of each pitch played.

different notes

Here is the breakdown of the notes’ different duration:

  • Whole note – receives 4 counts
  • Half note – receives 2 counts
  • Quarter note – receives 1 count
  • Eighth note – receives half a count
  • Sixteenth note – receives quarter a count

How to read music notes is definitely easy once you have mastered all of these basics. The simple illustrations guide you in playing the piano effectively using the basic knowledge of reading music notes. So go ahead and start fumbling with your hands on the piano keys to play your favorite music sheets.

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Music Time Signatures – What Are They?

by Tania Gleaves on August 27, 2010

When you start studying piano lessons, you will learn the basic knowledge of music which also includes music time signatures. Time signatures are composed of two numbers in the form of a fraction which tells you the number of notes and the kind of note receiving one beat in each measure. Say what?! That might have been your initial reaction upon reading this definition, believe me, I’ve been there. But don’t worry because I will break down music time signatures for you in an easier to understand manner.

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Music time signatures are commonly found at the beginning of each music sheet. These are the fraction numbers written right after the clef on the first staff. The top number lets you know how many beats there are per measure while the bottom number informs you what kind of note receives one beat. The top numbers can be any number but the bottom numbers always follow 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16. No other numbers can be represented at the bottom except for the aforementioned ones because they represent the five different notes.

If you are a bit confused by this, just imagine the bottom number in the form of a fraction with 1 as its top number. When you read the fractions, you will know right away what kind of note they stand for.

The Bottom Number With Their Corresponding Note Values:

1 – whole note

2 – half note

4 – quarter note

8 – eighth note

16 – sixteenth note

Say for example, a music sheet has 4/4 music time signature, this means that there are 4 beats in a measure and the quarter note gets a beat each time. In the staff, you will find four quarter notes or its corresponding equivalent in one measure. Some of the corresponding equivalents of four quarter notes can be two half notes, one whole note, two quarter notes and four eighths, and a few others more. Your guide for knowing the corresponding equivalents of music time signatures will be the length of duration each note has originally.

4/4 music time signature

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How to Read Music – Definitions to Help You Learn

August 22, 2010

L earning how to read music is like learning another language. It has its own letters, syntax and grammar. Whether you are learning to play the piano through the classic method or the chord method, you’ll have to be familiar with how to read music.
A page of music has a [...]

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Key Signatures – A Beginner’s Lesson…

August 21, 2010

What Determines The Quality And Quantity Of A Song’s Notes
When watching musicians play piano, you may see them refer to a piece of music in the key of “A” or “C.” These letters refer to the key that the music is played in or its key signature. Key signatures are what [...]

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Understanding The Piano Tab

August 20, 2010

Learning to play music with the piano tab is an alternative approach to learning via traditional sheet music. Whereas sheet music indicates pitch, chords, and time with musical symbols, piano tabs indicate the same with chord symbols and note names. The general idea behind this approach is to visually show [...]

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Using Key Signature Chart As Your Guide

August 17, 2010

It is easier to understand musical key signatures when you know how to use the key signature chart. The chart is actually a collection of all the key signatures used in music sheets. There is a wide variety of charts available that illustrates musical key signatures but they all have the same function. They only [...]

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Musically Notes With Dots – Understanding Staccato and Dotted Notes

August 17, 2010

Dotted Notes
Dotted notes are the exact opposite of flagged notes. The small flag that follows a note decreases that note’s duration by half, whereas a small dot that follows a note increases that note’s duration by half. A dotted half note would therefore become three quarter notes (one half note equals [...]

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Piano Sheet Music Confidential

July 31, 2010

Piano sheet music has been around since the birth of the piano. It is the diary of the process of the composer. All of the heart and soul of piece lies within the notation of the sheet music.
Sheet music can be used to record or to create a musical score. Musicians often [...]

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Easy Ways Of Learning Music Key Signature

July 31, 2010

Learning music key signature is very important in your piano lessons because they add “tuning” to the music pieces you are playing. At first glance, you might say that learning music key signatures is hard to do but actually it’s not. Let me teach you some techniques on how to easily know them by heart.
It [...]

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Various Notes

July 25, 2010

Beaming Notes
Music beams are lines that seemingly connect a series of various notes. Since they’re thick and horizontal (as opposed to thin and vertical), they’re more noticeable and intimidating to beginners. Rest assured that beams are nothing to fear – even when sheet music is plastered with them. Music beams [...]

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