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Appendix A
How to Read Music
Reading music can seem intimidating at first, but it’s not difficult at all.
Even little children can do it. This appendix explains the concepts of
reading music in the context of a familiar song (and if this isn’t familiar to
you, ask someone older than you are!). After reading this, you can practice
your music reading by working on the songs throughout this book using the
standard notation instead of the tab. (If you have trouble getting the durations,
you can check them against the CD-ROM. And if you have trouble with
the pitches, you can refer to the tab.)
The important thing to understand about written music is that it tells you
three kinds of information all at the same time: pitch (the note’s name), duration
(how long to hold the note), and expression and articulation (how you
play the note). If you think about how it all fits together, you recognize that
our written music system is really pretty ingenious — three kinds of information
all at the same time and in such a way that any musician can look at it
and play just what the composer intended! Take a closer look at these three
kinds of information that written music conveys simultaneously:
Pitch: This element tells you which notes (or pitches) to play (A, B, C,
E%, and so on) by the location of noteheads (the oval-shaped symbols) on
a five-line staff. The notes take their names from the first seven letters of
the alphabet (A–G), with the pitches getting higher as the letters proceed
from A. After G, the next higher note is A again. (If you ask someone
to play an “H,” you’re sure to get some funny looks.)
Duration: This element of music tells you how long to hold each note relative
to the pulse or beat. You may, for example, hold a note for one beat
or two beats or only half a beat. The symbols that music scores use for
duration are whole notes (w), half notes (h), quarter notes (q), eighth
notes (e), 16th notes (x), and so on.
Expression and articulation: These elements tell you how to play the
notes — loudly or softly, smoothly or detached, with great emotion or
with no emotion (that one’s rare, especially for the blues). These instructions
can consist of either little marks written above or below the noteheads
or little verbal messages written into the music. Often, the words
are in Italian (piano, mezzo-forte, staccato) because when composers
started adding expression and articulation to their scores, the Italians
had the most influence in the music scene. Besides, Italian sounds so
much more romantic than English or German.
TEAM LinG