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Saturday, May 7, 2011

Music note reading basics.

Music Theory - Note Reading



A staff is made up of five horizontal lines and four spaces. staff
Pitches are named after the first seven letters of the alphabet (A B C D E F G).
keyboard
A clef is a musical symbol placed at the beginning of the staff that determines the letter names of the lines and spaces.
The two main clefs are the treble and the bass:
treble clef bass clef


A grand staff is a combination of both the treble and bass clefs connected by a vertical line on the left side of the staves (plural staffs).
grand-staff
Ledger Lines are an extension of the staff. They are additional lines both above and below which are parallel to the staff. Each ledger line contains one note.

ledger lines bass ledger lines


Note Values

Each note has a specific duration. note values




Meter


    Meter is the regular recurring pattern of strong and weak beats of equal duration; also known as time. The meter or time signature in a musical composition is indicated by a fraction, and located at the beginning of a piece of music. The lower number of the fraction tells what kind of note receives one beat. The upper number tells how many beats are in a measure. In Western music there are two types of meter, simple and compoud. In simple meter the upper number is either 2, 3, or 4. Each beat is subdivided by two. Simple Meter
In compound meter the upper number is either 6,9, or 12. Each beat is a dotted note and subdivided into groups of three beats.
Compound Meter

23 comments:

  1. bery good post//lots of detail

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  2. Base cleff throws me off every time. I learned music initially on a mark IV alto sax.

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  3. I haven't had music theory in years. As an old cellist, I had to read in Bass, Treble, and Tenor.

    Yikes.

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  4. I've already learned more from reading this than I did taking 3 semesters with my general music teacher, Mr. Strawbridge. Thank you!

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  5. Thanks man! This helped me out =D

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  6. Thanks for the tutorial! As much as I like music and play a bit of guitar, I had no clue how to read sheet music.

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  7. Not really good at reading music, but this has helped me a little, thanks!

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  8. I used to know how this works, but you refreshed my memory, thanks :)

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  9. thank you, this helped me a lot!

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  10. Should probably go into key signatures next

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  11. Great post! Very nice illustrations

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  12. Being someone who has pretty much never even glanced at sheet music before, this was very interesting. Thanks for the post!

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  13. Very well explained. My music teacher couldn't even do that good of a job teaching this to me.

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  14. Oh god, this actually helped me out! Thanks!

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  15. great explanation, of the basic features of music beats. very easy to understand

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  16. Learned it in school, about 7 years ago, thank for repushing my skills.

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  17. Great tips should come in handy

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  18. man i almost forgot how to read music, i quit playing piano like ten years ago. nice post!

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  19. Great tips, should help me out.

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  20. Very nice post mate, you reminded me things I've unfortunately long forgotten.

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  21. cheers for the tips! they really helped me out alot :) I still suck at music tho xD

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