Learn How to Read Music

by Julia Jensen Baxter

To many people some of life’s greatest pleasures are found in reading a good book. However, for a person to have the greatest enjoyment, it’s necessary to have the ability to read fluently enough, so there are few if any stumbles over the words. Any stumble or error interrupts the message of the sentence and under some circumstances can even discourage further reading.

In learning how to read music, we find the process is very similar to the reading of a book, and stumbles can just as easily interrupt the message of the phrase. When we were young, we spent several years devoted to learning to read fluently. The school we went to was required to teach and help us in this quest. But, because the learning of music was not part of the curriculum, most of us never developed the ability to read music fluently and are unable to experience the pleasure of producing a flowing musical sound. BUT, it’s never too late, and the purpose of this document is to help people, whether young or old, to develop that skill.

In learning how-to-read-music fluently, there are at least two skills a person must develop.Every musician who easily reads music uses a combination of those skills and may not even be conscious of the fact he/she is switching back and forth between them. I’ll discuss each skill separately and then show how to combine them:

Skill #1

With music, two of the same notes will be written on the same line or space. They are pretty easy to spot, so let’s go to the next largest interval, which is called a “second."

Seconds are also easy to spot and play. Notes that are a second away from each other are on the next line or space. When you are playing a second, you are usually going from one note to the next note with a different letter, like A to B or C to D. Your hands will be going from one finger to the finger next to it. (Occasionally there will be exceptions, but they occur in more advanced music, and there will be fingering on the music to indicate what you need to do.)

Let’s do some exercises to get acquainted with seconds as we learn how-to-read-music. You can play these exercises by starting on any note. The only thing you have to remember is to go to the next note and to the next finger that is higher or lower as indicated on the music.

When you feel secure in how-to-read-music with seconds, it’s time to go on to thirds, which are also easy to recognize. They go from a note on a line to the note on the next line or from space to the next space. When playing thirds you will usually skip a finger as well.

Try these exercises in thirds:

As you can see, they are like 2nds in that they have one note on a line and one note on a space. Usually, when they are played on the piano, two fingers are skipped, although occasionally you will be asked to play a 4th with fingers 1 and 2. 4ths always have one note on a line and one on a space, like seconds, but there is a space in between the two notes.

There are, of course, other intervals which are larger than 5ths, but for the purpose of note-reading it would be best to become thoroughly comfortable with reading 2nds, 3rds, 4ths and 5ths first. The others occur in more advanced music, and, when you are ready, it’s not difficult to make the transition to them.

Skill #2

Skill #3

As you can see, the music alphabet consists of seven letters, A, B, C, D, E, F and G, and those letters keep repeating themselves as you go up the staff. The letter A is not the “first” letter, in how-to-read-music as it is in the regular alphabet. (In fact, any of the letters in the music alphabet can be the “first," as in the keynote of scales, but that can be discussed in another article.)

There is something important about the letter C, though as we learn how-to-read-music. If we remove all the other letters from the chart, leaving the C's alone you will see that a C occupies a line in the center between the two staffs. That note is called “middle C” because it is in the middle of the two staffs. Hundreds of years ago music did not have two staffs, it consisted of eleven lines and ten spaces. Then, someone had the bright idea of making the center line invisible except when it passes through middle C. This made the music much easier to read.

Now, let’s take a look at the next C’s to the right and left of middle C. Notice they are located on the next-to-last space going to the outside of each staff. It helps to imagine the Middle C line as the water surface on a lake and the next C's as the moon and its reflection.

The next two C's to the right and left of the “moon” C's are located on the outside of the grand staff. They both have lines going through them, and the treble C has a line under it and the bass C has a line over it. It’s easy to imagine them as a star and its reflection. Study the following example: (show staff with all five C's.) Now, with the picture of the grand staff on your piano, lay your hands between the Cs to get a feel for the different areas of the keyboard. The space between each of them is called an “octave.” In the space between the C's there is only one of each of the other notes of the music alphabet. And, by the way, none of the black notes on the piano have their own letter names. Their names are borrowed from the white notes, such as C# or F# etc.

The next step in your progression of how-to-read-music, is to become familiar with the notes on the other lines and spaces. There are several good method books that approach the learning of these notes in different ways. One method is to get the student acquainted with different 5-finger positions, starting with the C five-finger pattern, gradually going to the G one, etc. Another method is to memorize the line and space names. One method even created two cartoon characters named Jibbidy F (for GBD & F)and Ace (for A,C and E). The bottom line on the Grand Staff is G, and the next three are B,D and F. Then, Ace is located starting on the top line in the bass clef, A, then middle C and E on the bottom line of the treble clef. The second to bottom line of the treble clef starts the GBD and F sequence again, with F being the top line in the treble clef.

Now, let’s take a look at the spaces. The lowest space in the bass clef is A, and the next two spaces going up are C and E. Then, the top space in the bass clef is G, and B rests on top of that clef, just under middle C. D is on the space between middle C and the treble clef, and F is the lowest space in that clef. The second to lowest space is A, with C and E taking us up to the top. Use the following example by first practicing naming the notes. Try to set a goal, for example, like naming one line of notes in 30 seconds. When you are comfortable with naming the notes, repeat the exercise by playing the notes on the piano. (give several lines with notes on them .)

Well, this article on how to read music is getting a bit long. To summarize its message, I would suggest that you work to become comfortable with the three skills mentioned. Skill one and two will each aid you in reading fluently. For example, if you are used to reading by interval, you won’t have to “figure out” each note that comes along because you can combine intervals with familiar notes.

It does take time to become comfortable and able to read music notes, but it is well worth the effort! Happy music reading!!



Julia Jensen Baxter is a contributing composer to Music House Publications.