How To Read Sheet Music: Step-by-Step Instructions

Do you want to learn how to play a musical instrument?  

Learning how to read sheet music can help you achieve all of these.

Music and a book are both languages. For hundreds of years, the symbols on sheet music have been used. They represent the pitch, speed, and rhythm of the song they convey, as well as the expression and techniques used by a musician to play the piece. Think of the notes as the letters, the measures as the words, the phrases as the sentences, and so forth. A whole new world can be opened up by learning to read music.

Follow the step-by-step introduction to the language of music below.

How to Read Sheet Music

Step 1: Learn the Basic Symbols of Notation

Music is made up of a variety of symbols. The staff, the clefs, and the notes are the most basic symbols. To learn how to read music, you must first understand the basics. 

The Staff

The picture below is a staff. There are five lines and four spaces in the staff. Each of those lines and spaces has a different letter in it. Those lines and spaces represent A-G notes, and the note sequence moves up the staff according to the lines and spaces.

Treble Clef

There are two main clefs with which to familiarize yourself. The first main clef is a treble one. The treble clef is a symbol that is printed at the start of a line of sheet music to assign the lines and spaces of the staff to specific note pitches. It is one of the most well-known and recognizable musical symbols:

The Treble Clef is used for many instruments, including the piano (right hand), flute, soprano, and alto singers, guitar, oboe, and many more.

 

Ledger Lines on the Treble Clef

The number of notes can be extended above and below the treble clef staff using ledger lines.
These are short lines that can be added to the stave to increase the range of pitches that can be shown.
When reading and writing music, the treble clef is used to indicate which pitch should be played.. The ornamental letter G is on the far left side of the treble clef. The G swoops around the staff. If your instrument has a higher pitch, your sheet music is written in the lower register of the treble clef. Higher notes on a keyboard are notated.

The treble clef has the ornamental letter G on the far left side. The G’s inner swoop encircles the “G” line on the staff. The treble clef notates the higher registers of music, so if your instrument has a higher pitch, such as a flute, violin, or saxophone, your sheet music is written in the treble clef.  Higher notes on a keyboard also are notated on the treble clef.

Common mnemonics are used to remember the lines and spaces of the treble clef. For lines, we remember EGBDF by the word cue “Every Good Boy Does Fine.” Similarly, for the spaces, FACE is just like the word “face.”

Bass Clef

The bass clef staff has a line between the dots called the F clef. If your instrument has a lower pitch, such as a bassoon, tuba, or cello, your sheet music is written in the bass clef. Lower notes on your keyboard also are notated in the bass clef.

A common mnemonic to remember note names for the lines of the bass clef is: GBDFA's “Good Boys Do Fine Always.” And for the spaces: ACEG, “All Cows Eat Grass.”

Notes

The staff has notes on them that tell them how long to play the instrument. There are three parts to each note, the note head, the stem, and the flag.

Every note has a notehead. The notehead is either filled (black) black or open (white). The location of the note head on the staff (either on a line or space) determines which note you will play.

There are five lines and four spaces for staff. A ledger line is drawn through the note, above the note or below the note head, to indicate the note letter to play, as in the B and C notes above. The note stem is a thin line that extends either up or down from the note head. The line extends from the right if pointing upward or from the left if pointing downward. The direction of the line doesn’t affect how you play the note but serves as a way to make the notes easier to read while allowing them to fit neatly on the staff. As a rule, any notes at or above the B line on the staff have downward-pointing stems, and those notes below the B line have upward-pointing stems.

The note flag is a curvy mark to the right of the note stem. Its purpose is to tell you how long to hold a note. We’ll see below how a single flag shortens the note’s duration, while multiple flags can make it shorter still.

We will take a closer look at those filled and open note heads now that we know the parts of each note. Whether a note head is filled or open shows us the note’s value, or how long that note should be held. Start with a closed notehead with a stem. That’s our quarter note, and it gets one beat. An open note head with a stem is a half note, and it gets two beats. An open note that looks like an “o” without a stem is a whole note, and it gets held for four beats.

The length of a note can be extended.  The first is by a dot after the note head.  For example, adds another half of that note’s duration to it. So, a half note with a dot would equal a half note and a quarter note; a quarter note with a dot equals a quarter plus an eighth note. The second way is by a tie may also be used to extend a note. Two notes tied together should be held as long as the value of both of those notes together, and ties are commonly used to signify held notes that cross measures or bars.

We can shorten the amount of time a note should be held, relative to the quarter note. Faster notes are signified with either flag, like the ones discussed above, or with beams between the notes. Each flag halves the value of a note, so a single flag signifies 1/2 of a quarter note, a double flag halves that to 1/4 of a quarter note, et cetera. While allowing us to read the music more clearly and to keep the notation less cluttered, beams do the same. There is no difference in how you count the eighth and 16th notes.

What happens when there isn't a note? It is easy, we take a rest. A rest, just like a note, shows us how long it should be held based on its shape.

Step 2: Pick Up the Beat

To play music, you need to know its meter, and the beat you use when dancing, clapping or tapping your foot along with a song. When reading music, the meter is presented similarly to a fraction, with a top number and a bottom number, we call this the song’s time signature. The top number tells you how many beats to measure, the space of staff in between each vertical line (called a bar). The bottom number tells you the note value for a single beat, the pulse your foot taps along with while listening.

In the example above, the time signature is 4/4, meaning there are 4 beats per bar, and every quarter note gets one beat.

In the example below, the time signature is 3/4, meaning there are 3 beats per bar, and every quarter note gets one beat.

In the above examples, notice that even though the 4/4 time signature in “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” calls for 4 beats per bar, there aren’t 4 notes in the second bar? That’s because you have two-quarter notes and one-half notes, which added together equal 4 beats.

Knowing your pace or beats per minute is the last piece to feeling the rhythm. Tempo tells you how fast or slow a piece is intended to be played, and often is shown at the top of a piece of sheet music. A tempo of, say 60 BPM (beats per minute) would mean you’d play 60 of the signified notes every minute or a single note every second. Likewise, a tempo of 120 would double the speed at 2 notes every second.  You may also see Italian words like “Largo,” “Allegro” or “Presto” at the top of your sheet music, which signifies common tempos. Musicians use a tool, called a metronome, to help them keep track of their pace.

Step 3: Play a Melody

Let’s look at scales. A scale is made of eight consecutive notes, for example, the C major scale is composed of C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. The interval between the first note of your C major scale and the last is an example of an octave. The C major scale is very important to practice since once you have the C scale down, the other major scales will start to fall into place. Each of the notes of a C major scale corresponds with a white key on your keyboard. Here’s how a C major scale looks on a staff and how that corresponds to the keys on your keyboard:

As the notes ascend the staff, and move to the right on your keyboard, the pitch of the notes gets higher. What about the black keys? The sounds we can produce on our instruments are limited by whole tones or steps between the note letters. 

Let’s consider the C major scale you just learned to play. The distance between the C and the D keys in your C scale is a whole step, however, the distance between the E and the F keys in your C scale is a half-step. Do you see the difference? The E and the F keys don’t have a black key in between them, thus they’re just a half step away from one another. 

Every major scale has the same pattern on the keyboard. There are many other types of scales, each with unique sounds, like minor scales, modal scales, and more that you’ll come across later on, but for now, let’s focus just on major scales and the major scale pattern.

 Look at the C major scale on the keyboard below.

Semitones, or half-steps on the keyboard, allow us to write an infinite variety of sounds into music. A sharp, denoted by the ♯ symbol, means that note is a semitone (or half step) higher than the note head to its right on sheet music.

 Conversely, a flat, denoted by a ♭ symbol, means the note is a semitone lower than the note head to its right. You’ll notice on the keyboard picture and notated staff below, showing each half step between the C and the E notes, that whether you use the sharp or the flat of a note depends on whether you’re moving up or down the keyboard.

There’s one more symbol to learn regarding semitones, and that’s the natural, denoted by a . If a note is sharp or flat, that sharp or flat extends throughout the measure, unless there’s a natural symbol. A natural cancels a sharp or flat within a measure or a song. Here is what playing C to E would look like.

You need to understand key signatures in order to read music. The key of C! The C major scale you learned above was in the key of C. Scales are named after their tonic, the preeminent note within the scale, and the tonic determines what key you play in. You can start a major scale on any note, so long as you follow the whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half pattern. 

You will need to use sharps and flats if you follow that pattern in other keys. Since that is the case, we place the sharps or flats for your song's key signature right before the meter, after the clef, on your sheet music. Unless there is a natural symbol to override it, that tells you to keep those sharps or flats.

 You will be able to identify the key signatures of pieces based on what is shown. 

Here’s a quick glimpse at some key signatures using sharps and flats: