How To Read Music
First of all, if you’re completely in the dark about music theory, it might be an idea to check out the article; How Music Is Constructed: Some Basic Music Theory; before reading this one.
I mention in that article how mathematical music is, and musical notation (for example, sheet music) is no exception. Everything is split up into parts and segments, starting with the whole form of a song, right down to the millisendth of a note, and vice versa. When you understand the form, and how each increment of that form is broken down, i.e. notated, then reading music is relatively easy.
3 Octaves C To C
With sheet music, a three octave scale in C would be written like this:
Low C to High C Scale
If we think in terms of a piano keyboard, middle C is the note in red. Anything below that is part of the “bass clef”, the curly sign on the bottom left of the diagram. Anything above that is the “treble clef”, and is described by the sign on the top left hand side of the music. The time signature is also shown on the left hand side of the music, in this case 4/4 time, the most common of time signatures. A bar means a whole section of that time signature, i.e. four beats. The horizontal groups of lines in the diagram that make up both the treble and the bass clef are called “staves”. There are 5 lines grouped together in a stave.
In the sheet music above, the staves are broken down into 6 blocks by vertical lines. Each block is called a bar, and denotes 4 beats, thus creating the 4/4 time signature indicated at the beginning of the music. The musical notes are then notated in time the with beat of the music, and thus the pacing of the bars.
Notes can be placed on a bar in the white spaces, or on the black lines, each line of the stave representing a note on the scale.
For the black notes E G B D F I learnt this rhyme as a child:
“Every Good Boy Deserves Favor”
And for the white notes it was F.A.C.E:
F.A.C.E: FACE
“F.A.C.E.”, face.
Notes
The notes in the music above are “crotchets”, meaning a single beat, and in 4/4 time, there would be 4 crotchets to a bar, making four single beats, 1,2,3,4. Once again, music being mathematical, a single bar can be split into further increments. We start with a Breve, often called a double whole note in American and German terminology. One note, 8 beats. It’s either shown over two bars (yet again, in 4/4 time):
Or notated like this:
The diagram on the left hand side shows a hollow oval note head, like a whole note, with one or two vertical lines on either side. An alternative notation consists of two adjacent hollow oval note heads, as in the double noted bar on the right .
SemiBreve
Once again sometimes called a whole note in American and German terminology.
A semibreve is 4 counts long. So in 4/4 time, a semibreve would look like this:
A Minim
A minim is two beats, the above diagram showing 2 minims in a 4/4 bar.
A Crotchet.
Four beats to the bar.
A Quaver
8 beats to the bar.
Quavers can also be split up into increments. So two quavers look like this:
A single quaver is notated like this:
The stem can be drawn facing up or down, shown by the flag on the right hand side of the note, depending on the path of the music.
Double this time are semiquavers, 16 beats to a bar:
The double line at the top shows it’s a semiquaver.
A single semiquaver looks like this:
The squiggly line after the notes in this diagram in a semiquaver rest (see below).
To a demisemiquaver, 32 beats to the bar, which is just getting silly:
Rests
If there’s a space in the music, or rest, this is shown as:
A whole bar:
This bar rest also translates as a two bar rest, when it’s shown, for example, after a semibreve:
The single bar rest (squiggly sign), meaning one beat:
The above 4/4 bar shows a crotchet, a crotchet rest and a two bar rest.
A quaver rest looks like this:
And a semiquaver rest has a double tail on it, shown after the two semiquavers:
And a demisemiquaver rest looks like this:
Keys
OK, so that’s the basic notes and rests, and how they’re shown on the stave. Now let’s look at keys, i.e. what they are and how to recognize them. I mentioned keys, scales and chords in the “How Music Is Constructed” article. Every song has a key (with only rare exceptions, for example, free Jazz). The key of a piece of music can be a complicated subject. But, in a broad sense, it means that the note the key pertains to is the song’s harmonic center, or tonic. In other words, if the song was in C for example, you could play the note of C more or less throughout the piece as a bass note and hear the key (see the section ‘Finding a song’s key’ for more info).
Music is also generally written in either a major or a minor key. The major or minor depends on the scale on which the key is based. The key of a song is shown at the left hand side of the stave.
The Key of C looks like the very first scale above, with nothing on the left hand side of the stave, having no sharps or flats. “C” is also sometimes written to denote the key.
The Flat Keys
F : 1 flat, Bb:
Bb: 2 flats. Bb and Eb:
Eb: 3 flats. Ab, Eb and Bb:
Ab: 4 flats. Ab, Bb, Db, Eb:
Db: 5 flats. Db, Eb, Gb, Ab, Bb:
Gb: 6 flats. Gb, Ab, Bb, Cb, Db, Eb:
Cb: 7 flats. Fb, Gb, Ab, Bb, Cb, Db, Eb:
By the time you get to Db, it’s getting ridiculous. 5 flats and above make these keys really hard to play for any musician. By just changing the key to either C or D, a simple half step in either direction (whichever is most comfortable for you, the singer), you’re making everyone’s life much easier.
The Sharp Keys
G: 1 sharp. F:
D: 2 sharps. F and C:
A: 3 sharps. F, C and G:
E: 4 sharps. F, C, G and D:
B: 5 sharps. F, C, G, D and A:
F#: 6 sharps. F, C, G, D, A and E:
C#: 7 sharps. F, C, G, D, A, E and B:
The same applies as above. From B onwards, these are pretty redundant keys.
Minor Keys
I mentioned relative minor keys in the article “How Music Is Constructed“, and how they relate to the cycle of 5ths:
A minor key has a flattened 3rd, 6th and 7th note. Each minor key is related to a major key with the same amount of sharps or flats.
So, looking at the diagram, it shows that the key of C is related to A minor. The key of C has no sharps or flats:
and neither does the key of A minor:
And so on round the cycle: the relative minor of G is D minor, D is B minor etc.
Finding A Song’s Key
If you have sheet music that doesn’t have a key written in the left hand corner, you can find the key in a number of ways:
- It’s quite often the first or last chord, or else the chord the first chord resolves to.
- It’s the predominant bass note (if the key is F, for example, you can pretty much keep playing an F in the bass and it’ll sound right).
- If you have a keyboard or guitar, then if you can pick out chords it becomes much simpler. You’ll see certain chords repeating themselves. If the key is G, for example, you’ll find yourself playing the F# again and again. A big sign that the key is G.
Half Tones, or Semitones
What about half notes, or semitones, i.e. the equivalent of a white to a black know on the piano? This is notated by sharps and flats:
The diagram and the sheet music above show F to F#, a semitone.
Playing up octave using every note, i.e. every semitone, is called a “chromatic scale”.
Sharpening And Flattening Notes
If you want to write a note that’s not in the key of the piece, for example a semitone higher or lower than the current note you’re playing or singing, then this is notated by a flat or sharp sign before the note.
Once you’ve assigned the command to the music with a raised or sharpened sign, it’ll keep being played as such until you tell the music to do otherwise. So if you want to go back to the original note that fits in with the key of the song, then the opposite sign is used to once more raise or lower the note a semitone. This snippet is in the key of C. F is sharpened to F sharp, and then flattened back to F.
Dots
In the example above, there’s a dot after the crotchet, the first note. A dot after any note means “half as much again”. This makes the count of the dotted crotchet 1 1/2 beats, the quaver (half a beat) completing the first half of the bar, i.e. 2 beats, and a 2 bar rest completing the 4/4 bar.
The dotted minim 3 beats, the crotchet 1.
Ties
Ties work in 2 ways. They either simply tie the note together, as in the bar below:
A dotted crotchet (1 1/2 beats) a tied crotchet (1 1/2 beats), a quaver rest and a quaver for the first bar, with a semibreve the next bar.
The second crotchet is tied because it’s in effect tied to the 2nd half of the bar. The first dotted crotchet and quaver being the first two counts, the crotchet, rest and quaver making up the 2nd 2 counts.
A tied, dotted minim make up the two bars above. When a note is tied it means: play it once, for the duration specified. In this case across one bar into the next. The note above is 5 counts (the first minim being 2 counts, the next dotted minim, 3 counts).
Syncopation
“Dots” and ties create syncopation – changing the length of notes so they’re no longer regimented, i.e. strictly in time. Mixing up the length of the notes creates rhythm, and as soon as rhythm is introduced into a song, it becomes syncopated.
The examples used in the ‘Dots’ and ‘Ties’ sections above demonstrates this.
When thinking of the rhythm of a song, for example 4/4 time, it can help to count in quavers: one and two and three and four and etc.
For more on syncopation, check out the article: ‘How To Feel Rhythm‘.
Triplets
Another thing to now throw into the mix before moving on is triplets. This is simply a single note, but counted in three. To count a crotchet triplet, as in the bar above, hold your hand in an upright position and count “One, two, three”, moving your hand ‘up, down, up’. One is the upright position, two, the down, three the up position once more.
Triplets can be counted over any value of note: breve, minim, quaver etc.
Articulation
Articulation actually means, “how things are articulated”, or joined together, for example a skeleton or the syllables of a word. In music, the articulation means “what happens in between the notes”. The rests, the accents, the expression of the piece. And articulation depends on what’s at the beginning and end of each segment, as well as in between. We’ve already looked at rests and dots, and will be looking at some basic terms over the next few paragraphs.
Accents
In music notation, an accent mark means “accent the note”. The most common form being the fourth note in the diagram above.
The first note means staccato, meaning the last part of a note should be silenced to create separation between it and the following note, creating a note about half as long as the note value indicated.
The second note means staccatissimo and means a staccato note even smaller than staccato.
The third note, the teepee accent, means ‘play with a combination of accent and staccato‘.
The fourth note, the Accent mark, means that the marked note should have an emphasized beginning and then taper off rather quickly.
The fifth note, the tenudo mark, indicates that a note is to be separated with a little space from surrounding notes.
Legato
Legato is the opposite of staccato, and means that the notes are played “long”, very connected, like there’s no space between them, i.e. continuously. In the bar above, legato indicates this musical feel.
Slurs
A slur looks the same as a tie but has a very different function. Indicating a legato feel, a slur sign means “blend the notes together seamlessly so there’s no space between them”. With a tie, the note doesn’t move, but is “held”.
Slurs can be performed quite fast, as in the sheet music above. Along with violin sections, a lot of singers use slurs as an artifice, often to great effect. Christina Aguilera, Maria Carey, Celine Dion, Beyonce et al. Usually based around a blues or pentatonic scale (check out scales in the “How Music is Constructed” article), they’re a form of ad-libbing. And for more on ad-libbing check out the article: ‘How To Ad-Lib, or Improvise’.
Portamento
The first sign above means Portomento and/or glissando. Portomento means to wobble the note very obviously, similar to using a heavy vibrato, and glissando means to wobble the note and glide, upwards or downwards, a technique used extensively in opera. The bottom symbol above shows the sign for ‘glissando up’ and ‘glissando down’. Portamento was also used extensively by early sythesizer players (think Rick Wakeman), rock guitarists when using the whammy bar(nearly every heavy metal guitarist alive or dead), and, last but not least, the classic portomento instrument, the organ. Hammond in particular. Plus church organs and everything above and between.
Scoops and Falls Offs
These signs are used by composers to show they want a slide down from the note, or a scoop up to it. They haven’t been standardized (except maybe for glissando, the last one, yet their appearance is pretty explanatory.
Grace Notes
A grace note means, in essence, an ornamental note, an embellishment to the original. Either on the way up or down to the target note. Used extensively in classical music, this kind of embellishment is usually left up to the taste and skill of a performer in modern genre music, but occasionally you might see it notated.
Tempo Terms
Grave – Very Slow
Largo, Lento – Slow
Larghetto – A little faster than Largo
Adagio – Moderately Slow
Andante – “Walking” Tempo
Andantino – A little faster than Andante
Allegretto – A little slower than Allegro
Allegro – Fast
Vivace – Lively
Presto – Very Fast
Prestissimo – Very Very Fast
Moderato – Moderate(ly)
Molto – Very
Accel., Accelerando - Gradually becoming faster
Rit., Ritardando – Gradually becoming slower
Songs
We’ve now looked at the basics of music notation, let’s take a look at some sheet actual music and what you might expect to encounter.
Songs come in many shapes and sizes, and, although rules are made to be broken, most songs are written in the form of either a verse, or verse and chorus, or verse, chorus and bridge. The classic form for a song is verse, verse, bridge, verse. This form of song is called a “standard”, and refers to the works of composers such as Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. Usually 16 bars for each verse and 8 for the bridge (middle bit), 32 bars in total. Modern genre songs often veer away from this format, so you might just get a verse and a chorus repeated with a small solo section, for example. Or just a riff or hook, repeated at various times throughout the song (for example, rap and hip hop).
Let’s look at the formation of the song used in the “Singing A Song – Putting It All Together” section of the program, the timeless “Amazing Grace”. In this song there are simply 16 bars to each verse, which make it like a traditional Folk song. So we need only look at a single verse to see the basic form of the whole song. To demonstrate this, the version below is a simplified form of the chords and tune, in the key of Eb.
Not the most inspiring of versions when there’s no groove, i.e. syncopation, just the basic tune. However, once again we have the time signature in the top left hand side of the sheet music, 3/4 time, demonstrated by the click track. One and two and three.
The chords are played depending on the bars indicated. The notes of the tune are part of the chord within the bar.
This sheet music is split into the treble clef (higher) and bass clef (lower). In this instance, the chords are in the bass clef, the tune in the treble clef. It’s in the key of E flat, shown at the left hand side of the music.
The beginning chords are E flat, the key of the song, then A flat, the fourth note in the key of E flat, and then back to E flat again. And the tune fits in to the key of E flat with every note:
The 9th (the lyric ‘how’) simply means that from the root of E flat, or wherever you start the scale, you keep counting up 9 notes. So after an octave, E would become the 9th, G the 10, A flat the 11th, B flat the 12th and C the 13th.
Amazing Grace Full Song
And moving on to the full sheet music of the Amazing Grace version (above) used in the Full Program section “Putting It All Together: Singing A Song”:
This is another 3 stave version of the sheet music, with voice, piano and bass in that order (piano and bass are grouped by the curly sign at the left hand side of the page). It’s in 3/4 time and the key of Eb, with a 4 bar intro.
The chords have been somewhat changed from the first ‘straighter’ version, bringing out the blues and Gospel feel of the song (for more on chords, chord voicings and construction and how they ‘fit in’ to a song, check out the article “How To Ad-Lib, Or Improvise”. There are four different vocal versions of Amazing Grace, soul, Jazz, Folk and Country, with sheet music).
D.S.Al Coda
There’s one sign used in the sheet music above that’s net yet been mentioned, however, D.S. al Coda. Loosely translated, this means ‘ repeat back to the coda sign’. And when the coda is reached, i.e. the coda symbol, to jump to the end of the piece, symbolized by a second coda symbol, and to play to the end. This is notated in the music above as a coda sign at letter A:
There are repeat signs in the same bar of the music. On the next page at the end of the second set of staves is another repeat sign. These two signs are always seen together and mean, of course, ‘play round and round’. The writing ‘repeat A (coda sign) X 5 take Coda last X means just that: 5 verses and then the coda sign, the circle with a cross in it, and jumping to the second coda sign with Coda written by it, to the last 5 bars of the tune.
And So…
There are a plethora of examples of the notation described earlier in the article in the “Amazing Grace Full Version” sheet music above. Semibreves, minims, crotchets, quavers, triplets, rests, a letter A, dots, ties, slurs, a Rallentando, coda, repeat signs et al. Ah yes, and the little sign at the end of the song, the slur with a dot above it on the very last bar, means ‘pause’.
For more information on how to read sheet music, chord voicings and musical notation check out the article “How To Ad-Lib, Or Improvise”. There are four different versions of Amazing Grace (soul, Jazz, folk and Country) with sheet music explained and vocal MP3 examples.
Many thanks to:
Musician/composer/arranger Terry Disley for arranging and writing out the Amazing Grace Full Version sheet music:
http://www.theoreticallycorrect.com/MusicFiction/index.html
http://www.dolmetsch.com/index.htm
http://cnx.org/content/m11884/latest/
for many of the above diagrams and information.
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