Learn To Read Music

Hi Students. Conductor Cody, here.

The first step to starting off on this musical adventure is to learn to read music. Doing this lets you see what music is all about.

When you learn to read music, you are doing three things:

• Learning the musical alphabet
• Learning what music notes are and sound like
• Learning how to read other symbols that go along with the notes

What is the Musical Alphabet?

The musical alphabet consists of 7 notes, each with its own note name. The note names are the first seven letters of the alphabet. A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. There are no other note names accept for these. If you would like to see a picture of what this looks like, head on over to the music theory basics page.

What Are Music Notes?

Music notes are the ways in which we write down what different notes or pitches sound like. We write music notes to preserve the sounds that we think are pleasing to the ear.

What Do Notes Sound Like?

Each note has a different sound. Another word for sound in this case could be pitch. A pitch is the sound that different notes make when played on an instrument. On different instruments, the pitches of the notes can also have a unique sound from other instruments. 

How Do We Read Notes and Symbols that Go With the Notes?

This would depend on what symbols are in the music besides the notes. Sometimes, you'll see lines in various shapes that mean that the player should do different things to make the music sound better. This would require that you know what these other symbols are and what they mean. Go over to the music notes and symbols page for more information about this.

Go to the following page if you want to learn how to read music.

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