Reading Music: the basics
For piano, musical notes are written on what we call “the grand staff”. The grand staff has two groups of 5 lines, joined together by a line or curly bracket.
Notes written on the top group of lines tell your right hand what to do.
The notes on the bottom group of lines are for your left hand to play.
Usually (but not always!) your right hand plays the notes above middle C, and your left hand plays notes below it.
The treble and bass clef signs tell you if you need to use the high notes or the low notes. You’ll see these signs at the start of the grand staff.
Every note on the piano has its own place on the grand staff.
Middle C sits right in the middle!
Think of it a bit like a big staircase - the lowest note on the piano is the bottom step, and the highest note is the top step.
There are not enough lines on the grand staff to fit all the notes of the piano.
When we’re using the very low and high notes we need to write in the extra lines.
For almost all other western musical instruments music is written using a single staff. The clef at the beginning of the music reflects how high or low the notes of the instrument are.
High instruments, such as flutes and violin, are written using the treble clef.
Low instruments, such as cello, are written using the bass clef.
The Alto and Tenor clefs are used for instruments such as the viola and the trombone which plays notes that are more in the middle.
Here is where middle C would be written on each of the clefs
Treble Clef
Bass Clef
Alto Clef
Tenor Clef
Reading Pitch
Notes can be written on the lines on the staff or in the spaces between them.
We know that each of the 88 notes of the piano has its own place on the grand staff. But how do you remember them all???
Here are a few different ways to do it:
1. Learning the rhymes
Treble Clef SPACES: F A C E (the notes in a space spell face)
Treble Clef LINES: Every Good Boy Deserves Football
Bass Clef SPACES: All Cows Eat Grass
Bass Clef LINES: Good Burritos Don’t Fall Apart
2. Landmark notes
Learn where the Cs are on the grand staff and use them as landmarks to find your way around the music. Here they all are:
The highest C on the piano
The lowest C on the piano
Middle C
Two other very useful landmark notes to learn are the G above middle C and F below middle C.
The treble clef is also called the G clef because it curls around the line that G is written on.
The bass clef is also called the F clef because it curls around the line that F is written on
3. Look for patterns
The notes in this music are going UP the piano, one by one
The notes in this music are going DOWN the piano, one by one
The notes in this music are going UP the piano, in twos
The notes in this music are going DOWN the piano, in twos
Learning to recognise intervals (how far apart the notes are) really helps.
Practice spotting these intervals by sight. You can check for sharps and flats in the key signature, or added as accidentals, to find out if the interval is major or minor etc.
Seconds: These notes are next to each other in the music.
Thirds: Both notes will be on lines or in spaces.
Fourths: 1 note will be on a lines and the other will be in a space.
Fifths: Both notes will be on lines or in spaces.
Sixths: 1 note will be on a lines and the other will be in a space.
Sevenths: Both notes will be on lines or in spaces.
Octaves: 1 note will be on a lines and the other will be in a space.
Ledger Lines
The extra lines that we draw in for the notes that don’t fit on the grand staff are called ledger lines.
Here are some notes that are too high, or too low, for the grand staff:
In piano, the left hand usually plays the notes below middle C, and the right hand usually plays the notes above it, but sometimes your hands need to play notes that are higher or lower than middle C.
We need to add in ledger lines on the grand staff for these notes too:
Reading Rhythms
Notes in music tell you two things:
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which note to play
-
how long to play it for
The position of the note on the grand staff tells you which note to play. The shape of the note tells you about its rhythm.
Each note has a rest of the equivalent length.
On their own, quavers and semiquavers have a “tail”,
but when they are joined up, they look like this:
It can help to think of the notes as a pyramid.
Each line of the pyramid adds up to 4 beats.
Time Signatures
Music that has a steady, regular beat (i.e., virtually all western music!) is divided into equal measures, or bars.
The thick line is called a double bar line, it comes right at the end of music.
The numbers at the beginning of a piece of music are called a time signature: they tell you how to count each bar.
The top number tells you how many beats there in the bar, and the bottom number tells you what kind of beat they are:
-
If the bottom number is 2 = you count in minim beats
-
If the bottom number is 4 = you count in crotchet beats
-
If the bottom number is 8 = you count in quaver beats
In these time signatures, you count in crotchet beats:
In these time signatures, you count in quaver beats:
If you’re happy with everything you’ve read so far about time signatures, then read on! If it still feels a bit confusing, then you might want to come back to this next section at another time.
Simple, Compound and Complex Time
All time signatures have a main beat which is divided into smaller beats.
Simple Time
The time signatures we call “simple time” are: 2/4 3/4 and 4/4
The main beats in simple time are the crotchet beats, but we then divide those beats by 2 and 4.
We just count the whole numbers
We add an "and" (the + sign) so we can count the quaver beats: 1 and 2 and
We count the semiquavers as 1 e “and” a
We count 3/4 and 4/4 in exactly the same way.
Compound Time
The “compound” time signatures are: 6/8 9/8 and 12/8
In compound time, the quavers are not the main beat!!
The quavers are a subdivision of the main beat, which we divide into 3s (or triplets).
The main beats are written as dotted crotchets, which we count as 1 and 2
We count the quavers in triplet groups,
using 2 and 3
6/8 time signature has 6 quavers in it, but it only has 2 main beats. The other compound time signatures, 9/8 and 12/8, are counted the same way.
Complex Time
“Complex” time signatures are any time signatures that don’t fit into the simple and compound categories! Sometimes, but not always, the composer will put a note on the music telling you how to count them.
Here are some examples:
Strong and Weak Beats
Time signatures tell you which beats in the bar are the strong ones that you need to emphasize and make stand out, and which are the weaker ones that shouldn’t stand out.
4/4 counting (main beat) looks like this: 1 2 3 4
If you just play all the beats the same, then you can’t hear the 4/4 beat!
You have to emphasize certain beats for the listener, so they can hear it.
Reggae music does the exact opposite and makes 2 and 4 the strong beats, it is still in 4/4 but the change of emphasis makes it sound completely different!!!
Quaver beats are always weaker than main beats.
They would be emphasized like this:
*In time signatures where there are only 2 or 3 main beats, there is no medium beat.
In compound time signatures, the second and third quavers in each triplet group are equally weak:
Dots, ties and tuplets
Dots
A dot after a note means that you need to make it 50% longer:
Ties
When a note that is joined by a curved line to another note of the same pitch, it is a tied note. Although you have to count the note that it is tied too, you don’t play the note again.
This pair of middle C’s are tied together.
You play the first note, and you count - but don’t play - the second one.
Tuplets
When you see a group of notes with a bracket and a number over them, they are called tuplets. This means you have to subdivide the beat into however many beats the number shows.
Here are some examples:
Counting
Counting dotted notes, tied notes and tuplets can get quite confusing! Start by working out where the main beats are, and then work from there.
Here are some examples of rhythms you might come across, and how to go about counting them.
Here are some examples with complex time signatures:
It’s hard to count big tuplets. The best approach is to try and just “feel” them
Polyrhythms
In piano, usually the left and right hands play rhythms based upon the same subdivisions of a beat.
In this example, the right hand has a tune made up of crotchets, quavers and semi quavers, and the left hand is playing minims and semibreves. The counting for both hands however, will be the same.
With polyrhythms, the left and right hands play beats made up of different types of subdivision.
Putting them together is less straightforward.
3 over 2
3 over 2 (or, 2 over 3) is the polyrhythm you’ll come across most frequently: for instance, one hand plays in triplets whilst the other hand plays in quavers.
The quaver “ands” slot in between the 2nd and 3rd beats of each triplet group. It breaks down like this:
Practice taping it out on your knees:
together right left right | together right left right
When you come to play it, you can use this counting to brings both parts together: 1 2 + 3 | 1 2 + 3
Right hand is playing on 1 2 and 3, left hand is playing on 1 and +
Just make sure that you don't loose the individual triplet and quaver rhythms as you play!
3 over 4
3 over 4 (or 4 over 3) is another fairly common polyrhythm found in more advanced music.
In this example, the right hand has 3 crotchets played in place of a minim. Left hand has 4 quavers.
The second and third triplet beats fit roughly between the 2nd and 3rd , and 3rd and 4th quavers.
To break this down precisely, we need maths! We have to find a common multiple of 3 and 4 to work out where each beat falls. I am going to use 12.
There are 3 triplet beats in the phrase.
3 divided by 12 = 4 .
We need to mark beat 1, then mark a beat every 4 counts.
There are 4 quaver beats in the phrase.
4 divided by 12 = 3.
We need to mark beat 1, then mark a beat every 3 counts.
Working it out precisely, you can see that the second triplet beat is just after the 2nd quaver. The 3rd triplet beat is just before the 4th quaver.
In a fast piece, these differences may be barely noticeable and not worth worrying about. In a slow piece, you would want to make sure to play it exactly right.
Polyrhythms and other instruments
For instruments that can play multiple notes at once, such as violin or guitar, we would work out polyrhythms just as we would for piano.
For instruments such as flute or saxophone that only play one note at at time, an accompanying instrument may play the other half of the polyrhythm. We need to find out how both parts fit together. We could use the piano method again here to figure this out.