Reading Music

The Stave

This is just a fancy name for what the music is written on.

The treble clef tells us that the music is written for an instrument that isn’t too low (bass) or too high. The top number of the time signature tells us that there are 4 beats in the bar. Don’t worry about the bottom number, it’s rarely anything other than 4.

Notes

Here are the most common recorder notes placed on the treble clef.

When I first learned to read music I used to take a very well sharpened pencil and write the names of the notes above them. If I forgot what note was which I could just look at the letter above it.

Rhythms

There are a few different types of notes.

This is the bog standard note called a "minim" and it lasts for 1 beat. Suppose we have a whole bar of these notes:

When we count this bar we say "1 -2 -3 -4" in our heads and on each number we play the note.

The next longest note up is this one:

This note means we hold the note for 2 beats. So what we would do play the note and hold it until we get to the 3rd note of the bar.

If we put a dot to the side of a note it means we hold the note for an extra half of it's value. If we do this to the previous note we would hold it for 3 beats

The longest note is known as a semibreve and lasts for all 4 beats of the bar. To play it just count to 4 in your head and finish playing it after you counted 4

There are also notes shorter than the minim. These are known as quavers and semi-quavers.

This is a quaver

A quaver is half a minim and it is more usual to see quavers joined together like this:

To count this bar, do the same as we did with the minims but say "and" between each beat. This gives us "1 and 2 and 3 and 4"

The semi-quaver looks like this:

And a bar of semi-quavers looks like this:

A semi-quaver is half the size of a quaver so you get 16 per bar instead of the 8 you would with quavers. I find counting semi-quavers a bit difficult. I just try to play them twice as fast as quavers. J

It always helps if you know what the piece of music you're playing sounds like. That way you can guess what the rhythms are and just play the notes. Here's a quick example using 3 Blind Mice.

Bar 1 - 3 Blind Mice
Bar 2 - 3 Blind Mice
Bar 3 - See how they run

When it's sung normally you would sing "how they" in "see how they run" twice as fast as "See". We use the quavers to show this.

Rests

Sometimes in a piece of music there are gaps where you don't play. These can last a note, a bar or for lots of bars. These are shown on the music as rests.

This rest tells us to rest for 1 beat.

This one tells us to rest for 2 beats

This is a whole bar rest. The trick to remember is that if the block is sitting on top of a line it's a 2 note rest and if it's sitting underneath the line it's a whole bar rest.

This is the quaver rest

This is a semi-quaver rest

Accidentals

Sometimes we wish to play notes that aren't in the piece's key. To do this we make use of Sharps and Flats:

- This is a Sharp

- This is a Flat

If we see a sharp we play the Sharpened version of the note and if we see a flat we play the flattened version of the note.

If we see this sign:

- We play the natural version of the note

In this example we have change B to BFlat (often written as Bb) and F to F sharp (often written as F#). Later in the bar, the notes are returned to their normal values by the natural sign. The rule of thumb is we'll play F sharps everytime we see the F note until we see an F with a natural sign next to it.

When we play the next bar if we don't see any accidental signs then we play exactly what the music tells us to. All accidentals are cancelled out.

Key Signatures

If we have a piece of music where flats or sharps are regulary played we can put accidental signs in the top left hand corner of the stave by the treble clef. This will indicate that every time we play certain notes, we have to play the accidentals instead of the natural notes. This saves written out a lot of flats and sharps which would make the piece difficult to read.

The sharp sign tells us that everytime we see an F we play an F#. When we see the natural sign we obey it and for that note we play F natural.

One important thing to remember is that if we see 1 sharp in the key signature it will always be F sharp.

This example demonstrates the use of flats. If we see 1 flat in a key signature it will always be B Flat. Remember once we get to the second bar, the note is B flat not B natural.

Repeats

Suppose we want to play a song that has 2 verses in it. We could write the whole song out which would take a while or we could be lazy and use special symbols to tell the player to go back to the start and play the piece through again. To do this we use repeats signs and they look like this:

If you see these in a piece of music, it means once you finish the bar where the is you then go back to where the appears.

Sometimes you'll find a piece has the words D.C al Fine. This means play from the very beginning and end at the bar with fine underneath

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