guide

How to read music

Six things, in the order they stop being confusing. Every picture below is drawn by the engraver the rest of the site uses — which means none of them can quietly disagree with the exercises.

1. The staff is five lines and four spaces

A note sits on a line or in a space, and one step up the staff is one letter up the alphabet. Seven letters, then it starts again.

Fig. 1 · C to C in the treble clef

2. The clef says which letters

The same five lines mean different letters depending on the clef at the front. The treble clef's spiral wraps the line that is G; the bass clef's two dots sit either side of the line that is F. Same notes, six steps apart on the page.

Fig. 2 · the same eight notes in the bass clef

practise the treble clef practise the bass clef practise the alto clef

3. Each value is half the one before it

Not a scale of names to memorise: a single halving, five times over. Each bar below holds the same amount of time.

Fig. 3 · 1 × whole note

Fig. 4 · 2 × half note

Fig. 5 · 4 × quarter note

Fig. 6 · 8 × eighth note

Fig. 7 · 16 × sixteenth note

4. The key signature saves repeating yourself

Rather than writing a sharp in front of every F and every C, a piece in D major writes two sharps once, at the front of every line, and they hold for the whole piece. The order they are written in never changes: F C G D A E B for sharps, the same list backwards for flats.

Fig. 8 · two sharps: D major

All thirty signatures →

5. The bar line is not decoration

A time signature says how much goes between two bar lines: the top number counts, the bottom number says what it counts. In 4/4 that is four quarter notes; in 6/8, six eighths, counted as two beats of three.

Ten metres, with how each one is beamed →

6. The one rule that surprises people

A sound lasting two beats, starting on beat two of a four-four bar, is not written as a half note. It is written as two quarter notes tied, because a half note there would hide the middle of the bar and the eye needs to see where beat three is.

Fig. 9 · starting on beat 2: tied

Fig. 10 · starting on beat 1: one note

Both bars last exactly the same time. The difference is where the sound starts, and the rule is one line long: a value may be written as one note when it sits on the grid of its own length. Everything the rhythm sheets on this site do about ties and beams comes out of that sentence.

Now put it on paper

Note reading sheetsEight bars, printable, a new one every time you ask.Rhythm sheetsTwelve bars, beamed by the beat.Blank paperFor writing your own.