Contents method 1: Basic knowledge 1. What is a staff? Staff notation is the basis for learning music. In fact, it is also a must-know knowledge for reading music. 2. We first learn the treble clef. 3. The bass clef is also called the F clef. 4. The notes in the staff are composed of three parts: the head, the stem and the tail. Method 2: Beat 1. Usually a vertical line will appear on the staff at regular intervals. These vertical lines are also called bar lines. 2. Beat is the same as human pulse, it is the heartbeat of the entire music. Method 3: Rhythm 1. Rhythm is very similar to beat, but focuses on the strength of the sound and the overall feeling of the music. 2. Imagine that you are walking. One step is one beat, and when expressed in music, it becomes a quarter note. 3. Start picking up your pace now. 4. As you can see in the previous picture, when there are more notes, it feels a little confusing, and you may not know where it is when you look at it. 5. As we said before, the duration of a symbol is reduced by half. That is to say, for every tail added, the duration of the note is reduced by half. 6. Some people say that music is a series of notes. Method 4: Melody 1. Basic knowledge such as staff, note structure, and basic notation of notes and rests have been introduced. 2. First, let’s learn the C scale, which is the basic scale of Western music. 3. Learn some sight-singing knowledge. 4. Congratulations on your discovery. Method 5: Diacritical Marks and Music Keys 1. We have learned the most basic knowledge about rhythm and melody. 2. In Western music, the difference between notes is either a whole tone or a semitone. 3. What we discussed earlier is the C scale, which consists of 9 notes, starting from C, all corresponding to the white keys of the piano. Method 6: Changes in the intensity of music 1. When listening to music, you will find that the sound of a song is not always the same from beginning to end. It will be louder in some places and softer in other places. 2. Just like you don’t speak at a fixed volume, music also changes depending on different situations. 3. If you want the volume to get louder or smaller, you need to use another common velocity symbol: crescendo marks and diminution marks. Method 7: Further learning 1. There is no end to learning. Method 8: Key signature table 1. Each note in the scale has at least one key. As early as thousands of years ago, people began to record music with pens. Even the music scores we use now have a history of more than 300 years. In music scores, we use various symbols to materialize sounds, ranging from pitch, length and beat, to sound quality and even special effects. This article will tell you some basic knowledge and music reading skills, which will help you learn more music theory knowledge in the future.
Method 1: Basic knowledge
1. What is a staff? Staff notation is the basis for learning music. In fact, it is also a must-know knowledge for reading music. The staff is composed of horizontal lines. The musical symbols we use and the musical activities we engage in are all based on it. . The staff consists of five parallel "horizontal lines" and four parallel "betweens". We number the "lines" and "betweens" from bottom to top, from small to large.
2. We first learn the treble clef. The clef is located at the beginning of the staff and indicates a general range of pitches to be played. The staffs for both high-pitched vocals and high-pitched instruments begin with a treble clef. Later we will mainly use the treble clef as an example. The treble clef, also known as the G clef, comes from the curvaceous Latin letter G. Just remember that the treble clef is the one with the line spiraling up in the middle. Each line and space on the treble clef has a different meaning.
The five horizontal lines represent the five sounds from bottom to top: E G B D F.
The four spaces (the gaps between the lines) represent the four sounds from bottom to top: F A C E.
It seems difficult to write down all the notes, but we can use some formulas. For example, use "children's songs keep playing" to record the sounds on the line. Use the English word "FACE" to remember the sound in space.
3. The bass clef is also called the F clef. Sheet music for the bass part. The left-hand area of ??the piano, bass guitar, and trombone fall into this category. The F clef comes from the curved letter F, with the two dots next to it on either side of the fourth line. The pitches between the lines and spaces on the bass clef and treble clef are different.
The five lines represent G B D F A (the basic plan) from bottom to top.
The four lines from bottom to top represent A C E G (love eating foie gras).
4. The notes in the staff are composed of three parts: the head, the stem and the tail. Notehead: A hollow or solid circle that represents the note to be played.
Bullet stem: The short vertical line connecting the head of the string. When the stem is facing up, it is written on the right side of the note head; when the stem is facing down, it is written on the left. The orientation of the stems has no meaning, it is just for the convenience of reading.
Generally speaking, the third line and the notes below the third line have the stems facing up.
Tail: a flag-shaped mark connected to the end of the stem. Regardless of the direction of the stem, the tail must be written on the right side of the stem.
The note head, stem and tail *** all form one note. It will not only tell you the pitch, but also the duration of the note, that is, how long one beat is. Listen to music while tapping, and slowly you will be able to catch the beat.
Method 2: Beat
1. Usually a vertical line will appear on the staff at regular intervals. These vertical lines are also called bar lines. The part before the first bar line is bar one, the part between the first and second bar lines is bar two, and so on. The bar line has no impact on the music itself; it mainly serves to assist in notation reading. Bar lines divide music into many measures, and each measure has an equal number of beats. Sometimes you may not be able to help but beat the beat according to "1-2-3-4" when following the music. At this time, you have subconsciously divided the music into many measures.
2. The beat is the same as the human pulse, it is the heartbeat of the entire music. Dance music or pop music has a strong beat. What we often say "move every time, move every time" is a very typical dance music rhythm. In staff notation, the beat is expressed in a form similar to a fraction, which we call the time signature, which is located to the right of the clef. Like all fractions, a time signature has both a numerator and a denominator. The numerator here is written between the two spaces above, indicating how many beats there are in each measure. The denominator is written in the next two spaces, indicating which note is a beat (4 below is a quarter note).
4/4 is probably the best rhythm to understand. Each measure has four beats, with quarter notes as one beat. At the same time, it is also the most commonly used beat in pop music, so in most cases, you can count "1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4..." to make the beat.
Changing the numerator of the time signature also changes the number of beats in each measure. Another common time signature is 3/4, where each measure has three beats, with quarter notes as one beat. A three-step dance like the waltz, counting "1-2-3 1-2-3" is a good example.
Method 3: Rhythm
1. Rhythm is very similar to beat, but focuses on the strength of the sound and the overall feeling of the music. If the beat just tells you how many beats there are, then the rhythm tells you how to use these beats. Tap your fingers on the table and count 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 as you tap, keeping the same. Boring? Then let's make a little change. Hit harder when counting 1 and 3, and hit softer when counting 2 and 4. Does it feel different? Now try it in reverse, tap 1 and 3 lightly, tap 2 and 4 harder.
Listen to Regina's Don't leave me again. This song just fits the rhythm. Beats 1 and 3 are weak beats, and all the drum beats fall on the strong beats 2 and 4. This is how music is organized bit by bit. The bones of these music are what we call rhythm.
2. Imagine you are walking, one step is one beat, and when expressed in music, it becomes a quarter note. In most Western music, there are four beats per measure. Now feel the rhythm with your steps. Each step represents a quarter note, and you can count as you go: "1, 2, 3, 4-1, 2, 3, 4." In staff notation, a quarter note is a solid head plus a stem, without any tails.
If you want to slow down the pace, you can take one step every two beats, that is, when you count 1 and 3, take a step with a half note or half a knot. Half notes are similar to quarter notes, except they have hollow heads.
If you walk slower, one step every four beats, that is one whole note per step, that is, one note per bar. A half note is a whole note after removing the stem. It looks like the letter O, or like a donut.
3. Now start to speed up your pace. We've just discussed slowing down, where we lengthen the duration of a note while removing part of it. For example, when converting from quarter notes to half notes, we will replace the solid note heads with hollow ones, and when converting to whole notes, we will also remove the stems of the half notes. On the contrary, if we want to speed up, we have to add something to the note. Again, imagine you are walking, taking one step at a time (you can simulate this by tapping your feet). At this time, the bus you want to take has just arrived, but you are still some distance away from the station. what will you do? Run! He would also wave to the driver while running.
In order to make the notes fast, we have to let them "beckon", or give them wings. These wings are the flag-shaped symbols at the ends of the stems. A tail sign means that the note's duration is halved. An eighth note (with one tail) is only half a quarter note long, and two sixteenth notes (with two tails) is equivalent to an eighth note. To describe it as walking, we have to switch from a walk equivalent to a quarter note beat to a trot equivalent to an eighth note beat, doubling the speed. If it is equivalent to running like a sixteenth note, the speed will be doubled. Now try using steps instead of notes to hit the beat in the illustration.
4. As you can see in the previous picture, when there are more notes, it feels a little confusing, and you may not know where it is. To solve this problem, we separate the notes into small groups and connect them with stems. The stem is the thick line that connects the notes. It is a substitute for the symbol. Different notes have different rules for stringing together. For now, we only need to learn to use stems to connect quarter notes. Compare the previous two pictures and beat the beat again, and you will feel the effect of the fu stems.
5. As we said before, the duration of a tail is reduced by half. That is to say, for every tail added, the duration of the note is reduced by half. The effect of attaching points is very similar, but it increases the time value. Usually a dot is written on the right side of the note head (there are only a few exceptions, which are not listed here), indicating that the note should be extended by half the duration. For example, adding a dot after a half note is equivalent to adding a quarter note after it. Adding a dot after a quarter note is equivalent to adding an eighth note.
The extension cord also has an extension effect. It uses an arc to connect the heads of two notes. The length of a dotted line depends entirely on the note it is attached to, but a tieband combines two or more notes into one note, with a length equal to the sum of those notes.
There is a situation where you must use a tie line instead of a dot to extend the duration. That is, when the extended duration of a note exceeds the length of a measure, you can only write the excess part as a note and put it in the next measure, and connect them with a tie line.
The tie line connecting the note head and the note head is in the opposite direction to the note stem.
6. Some people say that music is a series of notes. This statement is half true. It should be said that music is a series of spaced notes. To represent these intervals we use rests. Although rests do not make any sound, they give emotion and life to the music. Just like musical notes, rests with different durations are written differently. The full rest is a short, thick horizontal line affixed below the fourth line. The dichotomous rest is a short, thick horizontal line affixed above the third line. The quarter rest is a sinuous line. Other rests are composed of a tilted stem and a tadpole-shaped tail. The number of tails is the same as the notes of the same value, except that the tails of rests are written on the left side of the stem.
Method 4: Melody
1. Basic knowledge such as staff, note structure, and basic notation of notes and rests have been introduced. After fully understanding this knowledge, we can start learning to read music.
2. First, let’s learn the C scale, which is the basic scale of Western music. Most of the scales you'll learn are derived from it. So as long as you remember it, the rest will be easy. The picture above shows the C scale. Let’s first understand what it means.
First look at its first note, bass C. Its symbol head is located on the lower plus line. If a note exceeds the five-line range, we have to add a separate line to it. The lower the note, the more lines you add. But we don't need to think about that yet.
The C scale consists of 8 notes, and we can find the corresponding white keys on the piano.
Whether you have a piano or not, you should try to listen to these notes now. Because music is not only for watching, but also for listening.
3. Learn some sight-singing knowledge. Sight-singing is one of the basic subjects set up to train music reading skills when learning music. It sounds difficult, but it's actually just singing the notes using what we usually call "do, re, mi". To sing the notes you see, you must first learn to sight read. This is a skill that requires lifelong learning, but it is also a skill that can be "learned and applied" from the beginning. Look at the C scale in the picture above, the roll call is marked.
Do you still remember the song "Doremi" in the movie "The Sound of Music"? If you can sing the sounds "do, re, mi", look at the corresponding notes while singing. It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember it, you can look for that song online.
See "C Scale Solfege 1 (C Scale Solfege 1)" in the picture above, and practice the C scale repeatedly with the chorus title.
Practice "C Scale Sight-Reading Table II" repeatedly until you are completely familiar with it. For the first few times, recognize the notes one by one, humming each note while looking at it. Then add the roll call, so that every note is sung accurately.
Pay attention to the duration of each note, and use the knowledge we talked about earlier: the high C at the end of the first line and the low C at the end of the second line are half notes, and the rest are quarter notes. Again imagine you are walking, with a quarter note representing one step and a half note representing two steps.
4. Congratulations, you have finally started reading music!
Method 5: Diacritical marks and musical keys
1. We have learned the most basic knowledge about rhythm and melody. Now you have the basic skills necessary to understand the dots and symbols on the staff. But that's not enough, there are some things you need to know, such as key signature. You've probably seen the diacritical mark, usually marked to the left of the note head. The sharp sign (?) looks a lot like a pound sign and indicates that the note is raised a semitone. The flat sign (?) is like the lowercase letter b, meaning it is lowered by a semitone. As mentioned before, the C scale corresponds to the white keys on the keyboard. The rising and falling notes correspond to the black keys. There are no sharps or flats in the C major scale, as shown below:
2. In Western music, the difference between notes is either a whole tone or a semitone. Find the key with a pitch of C on the piano keyboard. There is a black key between this key and the next white key with a pitch of D. This is because the notes C and D are one whole step apart. The white key with a pitch of C is one semitone different from the adjacent black key. So the note names on the black keys depend on the situation.
The reason why I say it depends is because the sound on the black key is both the sharp sound of the previous white key and the flat sound of the next white key. If you look at the order from C to D, it becomes C sharp, marked with a sharp sign (?).
In the first example above, the sound on the black key is written C#. If you look at it the other way around, you have to use the flat sign (?) to represent D flat.
These are conventional markup methods for the convenience of our reading. When you arrange the three notes C to D from low to high, if you mark the black key with D? instead of C#, you need to use the restoration mark (?) to mark the third note D, indicating that it has been restored at this time is D, it no longer means D flat.
Let’s talk about restoration notation. As soon as you see (?), you have to restore the sound that has been raised or lowered before. See the third line in the picture above. There is a flat sign ? before the second note D, which means D flat and all Ds after this measure must be flattened a semitone. Therefore, if the third note wants to represent D, it must be restored using reduction notation. The more sharp and flat notes there are in the score, the more attention you need to pay attention to before playing. In many cases, the composer uses temporary sharps and flats in the previous measure, and will mark the restoration mark in the following measure to remind the musicians, but it has no practical effect. For example, suppose there is a piece of music in the key of D major. It uses A# in the previous measure, so there may be a reduction mark before A in the subsequent measure, but it only serves as a reminder.
3. What we discussed earlier is the C scale, which consists of 9 notes, starting from C, all corresponding to the white keys of the piano. In fact, you can start a scale starting with any note. But if you only play the white keys, the scale you play is not a major scale, but a "modal scale". We won't explain it here. Generally we name the entire key after the first note at the beginning or the tonic. You may have heard someone say, "This song is in the key of C." This means that its basic scale starts from C and includes the notes C D E F G A B C. There is a certain relationship between the notes in the scale, which is marked on the keyboard in the figure above.
The smallest unit of pitch is a "semitone", and two semitones equal one "whole tone". Except for the semitones between E and F, and the semitones between B and C, the other two adjacent notes are all whole tones. The note relationships of all major scales are the same, whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half. The scale starting with the G note is expressed in staff notation as follows:
See the G major scale in the picture above. In order to maintain the note relationship in the major scale, we need to raise the penultimate note F, so It's just a semitone different from the final G. Raising just one note seems simple enough. But what if we started writing a major scale in C#? As shown below:
Once there are too many rising and falling tones, it looks very complicated. In order to simplify reading and avoid confusion, key signatures are introduced. Each major scale has its own set of sharps and flats, which are usually marked at the beginning of the music. Looking at the G major scale again, it has only one sharp F#. Now we no longer place the sharp mark next to F, but mark it on the leftmost side of the staff, indicating that all F notes in between must be played as F#. As shown below:
The G major scale in the above picture is played exactly the same as the G major scale without key signature shown above. Later you will see a picture listing all the key signatures.
Method 6: Changes in the intensity of music
1. When listening to music, you will find that the sound of a song is not always the same from beginning to end, and it will be high-pitched in some places. A little, a little softer in some places. We call these ups and downs the "dynamics" of music. If rhythm is the heart of music, notes and modes are the brain, then the intensity of notes is the breath of music. Look at the first example above.
Clap the table while saying: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 and 7 and 8? (The word "harmony" just expresses the length of the eighth note) The volume of each beat is the same, and it sounds like Sound like a helicopter. Then look at the second example.
See the accent mark (>) on the note that looks like a greater than sign? Re-beat the notes, but emphasize the beat you want to hit each time you see an accent mark. Now it may sound less like a helicopter and more like a train. Although only a few notes were highlighted, the layering of the music suddenly emerged.
2. Just like you don’t speak at a fixed volume, music will also change due to different situations. Composers use various dynamic marks to describe these changes. There may be many dynamics marks in a piece of music, but the most common ones are "f'", "m" and "p".
p is the abbreviation of the Latin "piano", which means softness.
f is the abbreviation of the Latin "forte", which means strong.
m is the abbreviation of "mezzo", etc. It is used to modify other symbols. For example, mf is medium intensity. mp is medium soft.
The greater the number of p or f, the more exaggerated the expression. Sight-sing the example above (the first note is the main note, using the solfeggio "do") to feel the effect of the dynamic marks.
3. If you want the volume to get louder or smaller, you need to use another common velocity symbol: crescendo marks and diminutive marks. They express the process of volume gradient in a visual way. The fade-out sign is similar to the greater-than sign, indicating that the volume gradually decreases.
The crescendo mark is similar to the less than sign, indicating that the volume gradually increases. Generally speaking, the volume on the open side is getting louder and louder, and the volume on the closed side is getting smaller and smaller. If the music changes from strong to weak, it should be marked as "f", followed by an elongated >, and finally a "p".
Method 7: Further learning
1. There is no end to learning. Learning music notation is like learning the alphabet. It starts out simple, but the various concepts, techniques, and subtle variations in different combinations can take a lifetime to study. Some writers compose music on spiral or other shaped staffs, and some do not even use staffs. This article can lay a good foundation for your future study.
Method 8: Key signature table
1. Each note in the scale has at least one key. But students who understand music theory understand that sometimes one note corresponds to two keys. For example, G# sounds exactly like A?. This is just a theory for an instrument like the piano. But some composers, especially composers of string instruments, feel that A? should be slightly higher than G#. The picture above is the key signature of the major scale. Key of C (no key signature)
Keys with sharp key signatures: G, D, A, E, B, F?, C?
Keys with flat key signatures: F, B?, E?, A?, D?, G?, C?
The key of C? is equivalent to adding a sharp sign to each note, so each note is sharpened. Half a tune. Similarly, in the key of C?, each note is played half a tone flat.
For the convenience of reading, composers usually indicate the key signature. String instruments often use the key of D major because their open strings are usually related to the tonic D. However, there are a small number of musical works that require string instruments to play E flat minor or brass instruments to play E major. These scores may seem like a headache to you, and they are not easy to write either.
Tip: Be patient. Just like learning a new language, learning music takes time. It’s the same with learning anything, the more you practice, the easier it becomes and the better you learn.
Practice notation on the instrument you use most. If you play the piano, you should have already started reading music. Many guitarists learn by hearing rather than looking. But after you start learning to read music, you need to put aside your previous knowledge first. Learn to read music first, then use music.
Find some sheet music of your favorite songs. There will be many main melody sheets in libraries or music stores, which contain some basic symbols and chords. There is always a song you like in it. Reading music while listening to music can help you learn better.
Use the formula mentioned earlier to help remember. For example, the fifth line of the treble clef is "Children's Songs Keep Playing" and the fourth line is "FACE". The fifth line of the bass clef is "Basic Plan" and the fourth line is "Love to Eat Foie Gras".
To practice sight-singing, you don’t need to be a good singer. This is just to exercise your hearing and develop the correct pitch and rhythm.
In order to improve your ability to read music, you can read more works by composers and listen to them at the same time.
Repeated practice is the key. In order to lay a solid foundation for reading music, you can make some small cards or booklets to help memorize them.
Practice in a quiet environment. You can try using the piano at first, because it is not difficult with more practice. If you don't have a piano, you can use an online virtual piano keyboard.
Enjoy the process of learning music. If you just force yourself to study, everything will become difficult.
Warning: Learning to read music is a lifelong process.
Take your time and pace yourself!