How do you read sheet music?

[Rengori]

Well?

[Meat Puppet]

http://www.notationmachine.com/how_to_read_sheetmusic/basics_of_counting_rhythms.htm

[Rengori]

Who are you and what have you done to Meat Puppet!?!
Unfortunately, whoever you may be, that didn't help much... Thanks for trying though.

[Samuraid]

You should find a piano teacher and a piano and start taking lessons. That's the best way to go about it. :)

To become proficient at reading sheet music can take years.

[blackmage_nuke]

Treble clef:
F-------------
E
D-------------
C
B-------------
A
G-------------
F
E-------------

Bass clef:
A-------------
G
F-------------
E
D-------------
C
B-------------
A
G-------------

thats the jist of it

[escobert]

left to right?

[Hawkeye]

You should find a piano teacher and a piano and start taking lessons. That's the best way to go about it. :)

To become proficient at reading sheet music can take years.
Spoken from truth. You can't just go online and expect to learn how to read music that easily. You need some hands on experience so you know what you're talking about.

That or take a high school music class, like band. :)

[Rye]

You should find a piano teacher and a piano and start taking lessons. That's the best way to go about it. :)

To become proficient at reading sheet music can take years.

Yeah. I take Chorus and Piano lessons, and sheet music is really hard to read, still. Singing sheet music is much easier than piano sheet music, but both are very hard.

[Spiffing Cheese]

Seriously, get a teacher and learn that way. It would be extremely hard to learn without one... there is so much to learn. This image helps with the notes on a piano and sheet music, though. :D

http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/aencmed/targets/illus/ilt/245dd834.gif

[Fuefu]

Isn't reading sheet music where you have a booklet with certain songs and it gives you notes and all on how long you play the certain note? If so, take lessons or grab a beginners book that teaches you that stuff. Grab a good one.

[Shauna]

Well, it's more knowing what note each... line(?) and space stands for.

My teacher went over how to read it in class, once and I've not forgotten. But, it's sometimes hard for me to work out if I'm just taking a quick look at the music.

[Fuefu]

That's why I myself prefer guitar tabulature. But no need for worries! I shall not fall into a stereotype of a musician who cannot read music. And if I were to I could care less. But I'll be taking lessons soon. Even with that I'm still practicing..

[starseeker]

I'm really bad at standard sheet music despite 3 years of school music lessons but I can read guitar tab quite well

[Fuefu]

Same here. But I'm OK on sheet music.

[rubah]

http://www.snowy-day.net/stuff/percminilesson.jpg

Light periwinkle blue=instrument. You dont' run into this in piano music or in nonpercussion music very much.

red: this is a quarter note (and an accent)

fuschia pink= where you repeat. the sideways division signs mean to repeat the measure (the area between two vertical lines) previous. The two dots and teh double bar at the end means go back to the last double bar with dots and repeat. In this case, the first double bar is four measures before.

dark blue is how you count the notes. 4/4 time means that for every quarter note (filled in solid with a line, but no flags coming off) you have one beat. Every measure (between the lines) there are four quarter notes, making one whole. in 3/4, you have three quarter notes making a whole. in 6/8 you can count two ways: Fast 6/8 has two beats per measure, and the beats are dotted quarter notes (quarter note with a dot behind it) which are worth 150% of a quarter note. (halfway between a quarter and a half note, or a quarter+an eighth note). Slow 6/8 has six beats per measure and each eighth note (a quarter note with one flag coming off) gets one beat.

Lime green is how fast you count the notes. Often it'll say something like "Quarter note = 120" That means that every half second you'll hit a quarter note. There are a lot of italian words for tempo (how fast). Allegro= fast, vivace=faster, largo=insanely slow, moderato=normally

Light green= measure number. Where it is marked, it is the seventh measure to occur, which in 4/4 time, will be about the 28th beat.

gold= Here there would be a clef, but this is percussion music, so this is the percussion clef, if you will.

purple: these are rests. They act just like notes except you don't play them. The weird curly ones are quarter rests, the hat looking ones that sit on top of a line are half rests, and the ones that hang from under a line are whole rests. "A half of a man leaves his hat on when he encounters a lady, but a whole man will take his hat off and be polite."

cyan: these are how loud. f stands for Forte, and is loud. mf is mezzoforte, which is moderately loud. p is piano and means soft. The more f's or p's, the more loud or soft the dynamics get. When there's an angle looking thing, it'll get louder or softer. The point of the angle is the soft part, and the open end is the loud part. They mean to gradually alter your loudness or softness over a period of time.

orange: this is a housetop accent. It means to hit a note really hard, but don't sustain it. It has friends right below in the red that are normal accents, which is hitting hard and sustaining the full value of the note. There are also little dots that'll occur over and under notes which means to stop a note before it's full value has been met, but don't play it any harder.

yellow= this is where the song ends.

In percussion music like this, instead of striking a different tone for every space or line, you hit a different instrument.

[o_O]

p stands for piano. pp stands for pianissimo. f stands for forte. ff stands for fortissimo. mf stands for mezzo-forte. mp stands for mezzo piano.

Don't listen to anyone else in here; that's all you need to know to be able to read sheet music.