- How's it going, guys? Julian Bradley here
from themusicalear.com. Today I'm gonna teach
you the important parts of reading music. So, is reading music important? Yes it is, I think every
musician should learn to read music, at least the basics, which I'm gonna show you in this video. For one, I know quite
a few musician friends who are great musicians, but they've never learned to read music and I could just see that
there's a source of insecurity for them, they lack confidence, and it always comes up in conversation when we're talking about music. So, reading music doesn't
have to take long to learn. In fact, I'd say you could do most of the grasping of it in 10 minutes, which is the goal of this video. Obviously after that, you
might have to practice it for a few weeks, maybe two weeks. But really, it's fairly simple, and I'm gonna break down
the important things which I think everyone needs
to know in this video, enjoy. (upbeat techno music) So first rule, reading
music tells you two things: tells you pitch and it tells you rhythm. Now pitch basically means
which notes to play, and rhythm means when to play those notes. So, pitch is the important part. As far as I'm concerned, pitch
is the really important part, and the good news is pitch
is the easy part to learn. Rhythm, however, is
the hard part to learn, It takes a lot longer to learn
all these different rhythms, different note lengths,
different rest lengths, all these dotted things,
triplets, everything. And it's not as important. For one, you could just
listen to the piece of music and learn the rhythm just by
listening to it once through. You can also sort of see the rough idea of how the rhythm should sound just by looking at the music, how the notes are spaced
out, and all of that. So in my opinion, if
you're just interested in learning the basics of reading music, then don't worry about rhythm. Rhythm is what takes a
lot of time to learn, that's what intimidates most people from learning to read music, and, in my opinion, is not that important. (light techno music) So, there are different types of clef, there are two main types of clef, which are treble clef and bass clef. You could think of treble clef as the right hand on the
piano, it's the upper part, and bass clef as the left hand on the piano, it's the lower part. Now the way music works with any stave is the lines and the spaces
are each their own note. So to move up a note, you
go from a line to a space, to a line to a space. The space means the space
between the two lines. So with the treble clef, the bottom line is an E, (piano chord chimes) and then the bottom space is an F, (piano chord chimes) then the second line is a G, (piano chord chimes), the second space is an A,
(piano chord chimes) and then it just goes up from there. So, B, C, D, E, and F.
(piano scale music) Now the easy way to identify notes quickly is to use an acronym to
remember the five lines. So, the common one I was always taught is, "Every Good Boy Deserves Food," and, really catchy, I know, but it stuck and that's
what I've always used. And if you have your own
acronym that you use, please post it in the comments below. So, Every for E, Good for G, Boy for B, Deserves for D, and Food for F. And then some people like to
do the same for the spaces, and they'll use the word FACE, which is what the spaces spell out. But if you'd like, you
could just use the lines to remember the spaces. So for example, you have E, G, B, well, B plus one is gonna be C, or D plus one is going to be E. Now the other thing to mention is that these aren't just any old E, not just any old G, any old B. These are actually specific notes within a specific octave. So with the treble clef, the bottom E is specifically the E above middle C on the piano. (light techno music) Now, it's also possible for these notes to go above and below the stave. So there's just five lines, but obviously these notes
can go above those notes and when this happens, we use
what's called ledger lines. And these are pretty logical, they're basically just lines
which get added to that note, so that you can measure
up beyond the top F and below the bottom E. And it gets a bit tricky sometimes to read these ledger lines 'cause you're not often looking at them. But sometimes you have to
sort of count up, literally, every single note, and
that's fine, that's natural. (uplifting techno music) So next up, we have the bass clef. Now, with the bass clef, unfortunately, we don't
have the same letters, although it could very nearly be the same as E, G, B, D, F, it's a bit of a shame. We actually have to learn a new acronym to remember this one. I guess it's not an
acronym, a rhyme though, to remember the lines. So with the bass clef, the lines go G, B, D, F, and A.
(piano scale music) Some people use Good
Boys Deserve Fine Apples, some people use Grizzly
Bears Don't Fear Anything, and in fact, I actually prefer the ones that don't have Good Boys Deserve, because you can get confused
with the treble clef and the bass clef, since
they're both very similar. So I woulde use Grizzly
Bears Don't Fear Anything, because there's less likely that you'll get confused
with the treble clef. Now it's also important to
know where on the keyboard these five notes are, G, B, D, F, A. So the way to remember the register is that middle C is one ledger line above the top line of the bass clef. So this is actually a good
way that you can remember both the treble clef and the bass clef. They're actually sort of
like a mirror of each other because on the treble clef, middle C is one ledger
line below the bottom line, and then with the bass clef, middle C is one ledger
line above the top line. So if you take nothing
else from this lesson, you can just remember where middle C is, then from that, you can
either count up or count down and figure out any notes. So it might take you some time, but that's certainly something you can do as a last resort method. (light techno music) Now in music, any of these
notes can be sharpened, which means raised up half step, and any of these notes can be flattened, which means they're lowered a half step. Now, the way that we write
a sharp is like this, so you'll see this little sign, it's basically the pound sign on a phone, and it will appear just before the note which is to be sharpened. So see if you can tell me which
note we're looking at here. Well, it's the lowest
space in the treble clef, which means it is, that's right, an F, and there's a sharp sign in front of it, which means it's an F sharp. Now, to flatten a note, we have this sign,
basically like a tiny B, and it goes just in front of the note which is to be flattened. So let's see if you can
work out which note this is. So, it's treble clef, we'll use the rhyme, Every
Good Boy, so its' a B, and there's a flat sign in front of it, which means it's a B flat. Now once and sharp or a
flat sign has been used, it doesn't just affect that one note. It also affects any repeats of that note for the rest of that bar. So if there was another F, or another two or three F's
played after that F sharp, well they well all be made F sharps. Or if there's another B after that B flat, well that will also be
played as a B flat as well. And then once you get to the next bar, you'll get a bar line,
which is a vertical line, then it resets and then any B's or F's will be B naturals after that. Now there's also a natural
sign, which looks like this, and this symbol basically
undoes the effect of the sharp or the flat from earlier in the bar. So say you had the F sharp, but then on the repeat of the F sharp, you actually had this
natural sign just before it, that would mean it's
back to F natural again, and then if there were
any repeats of that F in the rest of the bar, it
would be played a natural. So this natural also gets used, and it's basically a
way to undo the effect of the sharp or the flat.` (light techno music) And one final point to
make on sharps and flats is that the very beginning of the piece, you might have what's
called a key signature. Key signature is basically a
display of sharps or flats. So you might have say F sharp and C sharp at the very beginning of the piece before the music even starts. And it basically means
that this will be valid throughout the piece. So every time you see and
F, it's gonna be an F sharp, every time you see a C,
it's gonna be a C sharp. (light keyboard music) Now at the beginning of the video, I said I wasn't gonna cover rhythm, however there is one thing
I just wanna say on rhythm, and that's about time signatures. So, if you look at the
beginning of the piece of music, just as I said, there's a key signature, you'll also see a couple of
numbers on top of each other and this is what's called
the time signature. Now these two numbers tell you
what type of time signature the piece of music's in. So there're various time signatures, could be in 4/4, most common, it could be 3/4, could be
6/8, could be 7/8, 5/8, all these different time signatures. Now the important number
is the top number. So, it tells you how many
beats are in the bar. So if you see 4/4, that
means there are four beats in the bar: one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four. If it's 3/4, that means there
are three beats in the bar: one, two, three, one, two,
three, one, two, three, which has more of a
waltz feel, for example. If it is 6/8, then it has a
sort of swing type of feel: one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four,
five, six, and so on. And then bottom note is less important. It tells you what type of beat that is. But it's not too important, whether it's a four or it's an eight, usually it's one of those two. So that can also be useful to understand what those two numbers at the
beginning of the music are, well, it's the time signature. (soft keyboard music) So finally, I'm just gonna go over a few remaining notation markings, which you'll also encounter in music. First up, we have dynamics,
what are dynamics? Well it means how loud
or soft you want to play. So generally, you have P and you have F. So you'll see these F's and these P's scattered about the music. F stands for fortissimo,
and it means play it loud, and P stands for piano,
which means play it quietly. Now, sometimes composers
will stack up the F's, which means basically
the more F's, the louder. Same with the P's, goes
down to about triple P, it's pretty rare to see
anything beyond that. You'll also get MF and MP, and that just means mezzo
forte or mezzo piano, mezzo basically means medium. So you'll have medium
loud and medium quiet. So if we just take a look at this diagram, you'll basically see from the far left, you have the quietest going
through to the far right, where you have the loudest. And another dynamic
marking you'll also see is the sort of hairpin notation. So when the hairpin expands to the right, this is called a crescendo,
it means get louder. And then when a hairpin
gets smaller to the right, that's a diminuendo, and
that means get quieter. (soft techno music) Now if you're a piano player, you'll also encounter pedal markings. Basically, you'll see a
sustained line below the stave. As long as that line is sustained, it means hold down the pedal. And then when there's a break in it, it means clear the pedal,
and then it will start again. (soft piano jazz) Now finally, you'll want to practice this, it'll probably take a couple of weeks to engrain everything
which I've just shown you. Now there are two ways to
practice reading music. The first is to find some sheet music and practice sight-reading. Now, I'll put a link below this video to some of my free sheet music as my 5 Note Extravaganza piece, which is a medley I posted recently, comes with a backing track. (soft piano jazz music) And the second way is to practice notating your own compositions,
so maybe have a piece of music you play, you'll
practice finding the notes and writing them out on the stave. (light techno music)
