One of the most complicated parts of learning to read music is understanding the notes. Notes appear in a variety of forms and shapes. Filled or open, lines or no line; what does it all mean? Anyone who is interested in performing a musical selection, whether it is in a school play, church choir, or area band, will need to master reading music notes. It is fairly simple once you understand that basics of what composes a musical number and how to understand the jargon. 

Let us start at the beginning. When you look at a piece of sheet music you will see a symbol at the beginning. It will either look similar to a detailed, curvy ampersand or it will look like the letter C with a colon next to it. The curvy symbol is called a treble clef while the C with the colon is called the base class. This help physicians identify which sale of music is going to be used. The base class is traditionally reserved for insurance to have a deeper, baritone sound. This includes drums, some string instruments, and some types of guitar. The next symbol that appears on a music line is the time measure. It should consist of two numbers one over the top of another similar to a fraction. The top number indicates the number of notes per measure. Each measure contains a four beats. The top number of the fraction where fields to the musician the maximum number of notes that will occur in a measure.

Each note has its own specific value. Although is equivalent to four beats, or one full measure. I half note equals two beats and half a measure. There are also quarter notes, sixteenth notes, and thirty-second notes. For the beginner, music will only show up to quarter notes in a song. The values of the notes are differentiated by whether or not the circle is filled in or follow, as the tail or no tail, and the number of flags that are attached to the tail.

Once you have identified how to read the value of each note, it is time to understand what each note is. When you look at a score of music you will see five lines with four spaces in between. Notes are identified starting from the bottom of the scale going to the top. The notes that are within the spaces are F, A, C, and E. This is easy to or member because the notes spell out the word face. The notes that fall on the lines are E, G, B, D, and F. These notes can be remembered by a simple acronym “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge”.

This is the basics a person must understand if they are interested in reading music notes. Once this is comprehended it is only a matter of time and the devotion to practice that stops between a person advancing from a beginner to the next level in their musical studies.