We already know that music has existed since ancient times but the technology to record audio appeared recently in the past century. So how do you think Mozart, Bach and all those great composers recorded music? Well by writing it on paper of course. So it becomes paramount to read the Music Sheet.
We need to learn how to read and write music manuscripts so as to speak and understand other people’s music and record our music on paper too.
Let’s dive into this lesson, packed with loads of information. Please bear with me as we explore each terminology and concept one by one. Ready to get started?
What is a Staff?
Staff is basically the lines on which we write our music. The horizontal axis denotes the pitch of our notes and the vertical axis represents the time.
As you can see, the staff consists of 5 lines and the 4 spaces between them, these are the places where we place our notes.
Each line and Space represents a certain note. Therefore, there are 5 line notes and 4 space notes.
Don’t worry about writing the notes or the type of notes yet, we will cover that in the next lesson.
Measures or Bars of Music Sheet
Well we can’t really have a continuous stream of notes, it will be difficult to read or keep track of where you are in the timeline. So people decided to break the staff into something we call as a measure or a bar.
A measure or a bar is nothing but a segment in a music sheet that is defined by the number of beats. It helps in organizing the rhythm and structure of a musical piece.
As you can see in the above figure, we divided bars by a single vertical line. We’ll define a bar more when we discuss time signatures, you can find that lesson here.
Clefs on the Music Sheet
If you ever laid your eyes on a music sheet before then you must have noticed that big beautiful squiggly figure at the start of each line.
That is what we call a Clef.
Clefs denotes the frequency range of the instrument on which the notes are supposed to be played on.
There are two kinds of clefs: A treble Clef and a Bass Clef. (Well actually there are more than one but for this article we’re covering only two of the most common)
Treble clefs are mostly used for instruments like guitar or piano or flutes.
And Bass Clefs are mostly used for instruments like bass guitar, cello, or the bass range on the piano.
Notes for the Clefs
Alright, we reach the point where we name all the notes on the staff. This is important information so you need to try your best to remember the notes, because this will help in your sight reading practices.
For the space notes, it spells FACE so it is easy to remember.
For the line notes for the Treble Clef you can use the acronym: Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
Because it wraps its tail around the line indicating the G note, the treble clef is also referred to as the G-Clef.
For bass clef you just need to practice it often to remember the notes. But one tip I can give you is that the line note between the two dots of the bass clef will always be an F.
Accidentals on the Staff
mhmmm, we got the natural notes on the staff but what about the accidentals? Where do we right them?
Easy Answer is to use the symbols for it in front of the notes you want to sharpen(#) or flatten(♭).
For Example
Ledger Lines
We can extend the range of a staff beyond regular lines to accommodate the notes that fall out of the standard range of the clefs, they are added above or below the staff.
The notes for the ledger lines are the same as notes for the staff.
Grand Staff
The grand staff, a combination of the treble and bass clefs, is depicted in the above picture, primarily utilized for the piano. Take note of how both clefs are linked through the middle C.
That will be all for this lesson. The next lesson is here.
Cheers,
SonorousMoose xD
