How to Read Sheet Music

Follow These Simple Steps!

Have you ever heard a song on the radio and thought, “Hey, it’d be really cool to know how to play that.” Do you have friends who play musical instruments, and you want to get in on the fun? Do you just want to expand your general artistic knowledge? Well, learning the basics of how to read sheet music can help you achieve all of these, and in a shorter amount of time than you might have thought!

At its very simplest, music is a language just like you’d read aloud from a book. The symbols you’ll see on pages of sheet music have been used for hundreds of years. And they represent the pitch, speed and rhythm of the song they convey, as well as expression and techniques used by a musician to play the piece. Think of the notes as the letters, the measures as the words, the phrases as the sentences and so forth. Learning to read music really does open up a whole new world to explore!

Follow our step-by-step introduction to the language of music below, at the end of this article, you’ll be playing along in no time at all.

Step 1: Learn the Basic Symbols of Notation

Music is made up of a variety of symbols, the most basic of which are the staff, the clefs and the notes. All music contains these fundamental components, and in order to learn how to read music, you must first familiarize yourself with these basics.

The Staff

The staff consists of five lines and four spaces. Each of those lines and each of those spaces represents a different letter, which in turn represents a note. Those lines and spaces represent notes named A-G, and the note sequence moves alphabetically up the staff.

Treble Clef

There are two main clefs with which to familiarize yourself; the first is a treble clef. The treble clef has the ornamental letter G on the far left side. The G’s inner swoop encircles the “G” line on the staff. The treble clef notates the higher registers of music, so if your instrument has a higher pitch, such as a flute, violin or saxophone, your sheet music is written in the treble clef.  Higher notes on a keyboard also are notated on the treble clef.

We use common mnemonics to remember the note names for the lines and spaces of the treble clef. For lines, we remember EGBDF by the word cue “Every Good Boy Does Fine.” Similarly for the spaces, FACE is just like the word “face.”

Bass Clef

The line between the two bass clef dots is the “F” line on the bass clef staff, and it’s also referred to as the F clef. The bass clef notates the lower registers of music, so if your instrument has a lower pitch, such as a bassoon, tuba or cello, your sheet music is written in the bass clef. Lower notes on your keyboard also are notated in the bass clef.

A common mnemonic to remember note names for the lines of the bass clef is: GBDFA “Good Boys Do Fine Always.” And for the spaces: ACEG, “All Cows Eat Grass.”

Notes

Notes placed on the staff tell us which note letter to play on our instrument and how long to play it. There are three parts of each note, the note head, the stem and the flag.

Every note has a note head, either filled (black) or open (white). Where the note head sits on the staff (either on a line or a space) determines which note you will play. Sometimes, note heads will sit above or below the five lines and four spaces of a staff. In that case, a line is drawn through the note, above the note or below the note head, to indicate the note letter to play, as in the B and C notes above.

The note stem is a thin line that extends either up or down from the note head. The line extends from the right if pointing upward or from the left if pointing downward. The direction of the line doesn’t affect how you play the note, but serves as a way to make the notes easier to read while allowing them to fit neatly on the staff. As a rule, any notes at or above the B line on the staff have downward pointing stems, those notes below the B line have upward pointing stems.

The note flag is a curvy mark to the right of the note stem. Its purpose is to tell you how long to hold a note. We’ll see below how a single flag shortens the note’s duration, while multiple flags can make it shorter still.

Now that you know the parts to each note, we’ll take a closer look at those filled and open note heads discussed above. Whether a note head is filled or open shows us the note’s value, or how long that note should be held. Start with a closed note head with a stem. That’s our quarter note, and it gets one beat. An open note head with a stem is a half note, and it gets two beats. An open note that looks like an “o” without a stem is a whole note, and it gets held for four beats.

There are other ways to extend the length of a note. A dot after the note head, for example, adds another half of that note’s duration to it. So, a half note with a dot would equal a half note and a quarter note; a quarter note with a dot equals a quarter plus an eighth note. A tie may also be used to extend a note. Two notes tied together should be held as long as the value of both of those notes together, and ties are commonly used to signify held notes that cross measures or bars.

The opposite may also happen, we can shorten the amount of time a note should be held, relative to the quarter note. Faster notes are signified with either flags, like the ones discussed above, or withbeams between the notes. Each flag halves the value of a note, so a single flag signifies 1/2 of a quarter note, a double flag halves that to 1/4 of a quarter note, et cetera. Beams do the same, while allowing us to read the music more clearly and keep the notation less cluttered. As you can see, there’s no difference in how you count the eighth and 16th notes above.

But what happens when there isn’t a note taking up each beat? It’s easy, we take a rest! A rest, just like a note, shows us how long it should be held based on its shape. See how whole and quarter rests are used in the song “Here We Go Looby-Loo.”

Step 2: Pick Up the Beat

In order to play music, you need to know its meter, the beat you use when dancing, clapping or tapping your foot along with a song. When reading music, the meter is presented similar to a fraction, with a top number and a bottom number, we call this the song’s time signature. The top number tells you how many beats to a measure, the space of staff in between each vertical line (called a bar). The bottom number tells you the note value for a single beat, the pulse your foot taps along with while listening.

In the example above, the time signature is 4/4, meaning there are 4 beats per bar and that every quarter note gets one beat and try counting along 1,2,3,4 – 1,2,3,4 with the beat numbers above.
In the example below, the time signature is 3/4, meaning there are 3 beats per bar and that every quarter note gets one beat, try counting the beats, 1,2,3 – 1,2,3.

Let’s look again at the above examples, notice that even though the 4/4 time signature in “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” calls for 4 beats per bar, there aren’t 4 notes in second bar? That’s because you have two quarter notes and one half note, which added together equal 4 beats.

In addition to your note values and time signature, the last piece to feeling the rhythm is knowing your tempo, or beats per minute. Tempo tells you how fast or slow a piece is intended to be played, and often is shown at the top of a piece of sheet music. A tempo of, say 60 BPM (beats per minute) would mean you’d play 60 of the signified notes every minute or a single note every second. Likewise, a tempo of 120 would double the speed at 2 notes every second.  You may also see Italian words like “Largo,” “Allegro” or “Presto” at the top of your sheet music, which signify common tempos. Musicians use a tool, called a metronome, to help them keep tempo while practicing a new piece. Click here to see an online metronome tool, and click on the circles next to the BPM values to see how a tempo can speed up and slow down.

Step 3: Play a Melody

Congratulations, you’re almost on your way to reading music! First, let’s look at scales. A scale is made of eight consecutive notes, for example, the C major scale is composed of C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. The interval between the first note of your C major scale and the last is an example of an octave. The C major scale is very important to practice, since once you have the C scale down, the other major scales will start to fall into place. Each of the notes of a C major scale corresponds with a white key on your keyboard. Here’s how a C major scale looks on a staff and how that corresponds to the keys on your keyboard:

You’ll notice that as the notes ascend the staff, and move to the right on your keyboard, the pitch of the notes gets higher. But, what about the black keys? Musically, whole tones, or whole steps between the note letters, would limit the sounds we’re able to produce on our instruments. Let’s consider the C major scale you just learned to play. The distance between the C and the D keys in your C scale is a whole step, however the distance between the E and the F keys in your C scale is a half step. Do you see the difference? The E and the F keys don’t have a black key in between them, thus they’re just a half step away from one another. Every major scale you’ll play on a keyboard has the same pattern, whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half. There are many other types of scales, each with unique sounds, like minor scales, modal scales and more that you’ll come across later on, but for now let’s focus just on major scales and the major scale pattern. Look at the C major scale again on the keyboard below.

Semitones, or half-steps on the keyboard, allow us to write an infinite variety of sounds into music. Asharp, denoted by the ♯ symbol, means that note is a semitone (or half step) higher than the note head to its right on sheet music. Conversely, a flat, denoted by a ♭ symbol, means the note is a semitone lower than the note head to its right. You’ll notice on the keyboard picture and notated staff below, showing each half step between the C and the E notes, that whether you use the sharp or the flat of a note depends on whether you’re moving up or down the keyboard.

There’s one more symbol to learn regarding semitones, and that’s the natural, denoted by a ♮. If a note is sharp or flat, that sharp or flat extends throughout the measure, unless there’s a natural symbol. A natural  cancels a sharp or flat within a measure or a song. Here’s what playing C to E would look like with natural symbols.

Finally, in order to read music, you’ll need to understand key signatures. You actually already know one key signature, the key of C! The C major scale you learned above was in the key of C. Scales are named after their tonic, the preeminent note within the scale, and the tonic determines what key you play in. You can start a major scale on any note, so long as you follow the whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half pattern. Now, following that pattern in keys other than the key of C will require you to use sharps and flats. Since that’s the case, we place the sharps or flats for your song’s key signature right before the meter, after the clef, on your sheet music. That tells you to maintain those sharps or flats throughout the music, unless of course there’s a natural symbol to override it. You will begin to recognize the key signatures of pieces based on what sharps or flats are shown. Here’s a quick glimpse at some key signatures using sharps and flats:

Contact us +2348060350669.

sajirenike@gmail.com
@wonderkidzmusicacademy on IG
@sajirenike on Twitter
@wonderkidzmusic on Twitter

Note Relationships: Melody and Harmony in PIANO,THEORY

Segun Ajirenike provides music classes in PH. sajirenike@yahoo.com

A note can be defined as any sound that belongs to any of the twelve pitch classes on the piano.

It is a music sound with a precise pitch. Here are the twelve of them:
If you know what alphabet letters are to language, atoms are to chemistry, then you’ll appreciate what notes are to music.

Even though music scholars don’t emphasize the subject of notes enough, notes can become anything in music.

Notes can form scales.
Notes can form intervals.
Notes can form chords.

This explains why we stop to make notes our focus every once in a while.

The process of making music largely depends on the relationship between these notes and in this lesson, we’ll be looking at two levels of relationship that exist between notes. Note relationship basically refers to the way in which two or more notes are connected.

Even though this lesson is suitable for beginners, I’d also recommend it for everyone, especially teachers.

Twelve Benefits of Music Education.

1. Early musical training helps develop brain areas involved in language and reasoning. It is thought that brain development continues for many years after birth. Recent studies have clearly indicated that musical training physically develops the part of the left side of the brain known to be involved with processing language, and can actually wire the brain’s circuits in specific ways. Linking familiar songs to new information can also help imprint information on young mind.

2. There is also a causal link between music and spatial intelligence(the ability to perceive the world accurately and to form mental pictures of things). This kind of intelligence, by which one can visualize various elements that should go together, is critical to the sort of thinking necessary for everything from solving advanced mathematics problems to being able to pack a book-bag with everything that will be needed for the day.

3. Students of the arts learn to think creatively and to solve problems by imagining various solutions, rejecting outdated rules and assumptions. Questions about the arts do not have only one right answer.

4. Recent studies show that students who study the arts are more successful on standardized test such as the SAT. They also achieve higher grades in high school.

5. A study of the arts provides children with an internal glimpse of other cultures and teaches them to be empathetic towards the people of these cultures. This development of compassion and empathy, as opposed to development of greed and a “me first” attitude, provides a bridge across cultural chasms that leads to respect of other races at an early age.

6. Students of music learn craftsmanship as they study how details are put together painstakingly and what constitutes good, as opposed to mediocre, work. These standards, when applied to a student’s own work, demand a new level of excellence and require students to stretch their inner resources.


7. In music, a mistake is a mistake; the instrument is in tune or not, the notes are well played or not, the entrance is made or not. It is only by much hard work that a successful performance is possible. Through music study, students learn the value of sustained effort to achieve excellence and the concrete rewards of hard work.


8. Music study enhances teamwork skills and discipline. In order for an orchestra to sound good, all players must work together harmoniously towards a single goal, the performance, and must commit to learning music, attending rehearsals, and practicing.


9. Music provides children with a means of self-expression. Now that there is relative security in the basics of existence, the challenge is to make life meaningful and to reach for a higher stage of development. Everyone needs to be in touch at some time in his life with his core, with what he is and what he feels. Self-esteem is a by-product of this self-expression.

10. Music study develops skills that are necessary in the workplace. It focuses on “doing,” as opposed to observing, and teaches students how to perform, literally, anywhere in the world. Employers are looking for multi-dimensional workers with the sort of flexible and supple intellects that music education helps to create as described above. In the music classroom, students can also learn to better communicate and cooperate with one another.

11. Music performance teaches young people to conquer fear and to take risks. A little anxiety is a good thing, and something that will occur often in life. Dealing with it early and often makes it less of a problem later. Risk-taking is essential if a child is to fully develop his or her potential. Music contributes to mental health and can help prevent risky behavior such as teenage drug abuse.


12. An arts education exposes children to the incomparable.

The Power of Music To Reduce Stress.

The soothing power of music is well-established. It has a unique link to our emotions, so can be an extremely effective stress management tool.

Listening to music can have a tremendously relaxing effect on our minds and bodies, especially slow, quiet classical music. This type of music can have a beneficial effect on our physiological functions, slowing the pulse and heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and decreasing the levels of stress hormone.

As music can absorb our attention, it acts as a distraction at the same time it helps to explore emotions. This means it can be a great aid to meditation, helping to prevent the mind wandering.

Musical preference varies widely between individuals, so only you can decide what you like and what is suitable for each mood. But even if you don’t usually listen to classical music it may be worth giving it a try when selecting the most calming music.

When people are very stressed, there is a tendency to avoid actively listening to music. Perhaps it feels like a waste of time, not helping to achieve anything. But as we know, productivity increases when stress is reduced, so this is another area where you can gain vast rewards. It just takes a small effort to begin with.

To incorporate music into a busy life, try playing CDs in the car, or put the radio on when in the bath or shower. Take portable music with you when walking the dog, or put the stereo on instead of the TV.

Singing (or shouting) along can also be a great release of tension, and karaoke is very enjoyable for some extroverts! Calming music before bedtime promotes peace and relaxation and helps to induce sleep

Research on Music

Music has been used for hundreds of years to treat illnesses and restore harmony between mind and body. But recently, scientific studies have attempted to measure the potential benefits of music. They have found:

-Music’s form and structure can bring order and security to disabled and distressed children. It encourages coordination and communication, so improves their quality of life.

-Listening to music on headphones reduces stress and anxiety in hospital patients before and after surgery.

-Music can help reduce both the sensation and distress of both chronic pain and postoperative pain.

-Listening to music can relieve depression and increase self-esteem ratings in elderly people.

-Making music can reduce burnout and improve mood among nursing students.

Music therapy significantly reduces emotional distress and boosts quality of life among adult cancer patients. 

 Meditation

Certain music is appropriate for meditation as it can help the mind slow down and initiate the relaxation response. However, not all peaceful or “New Age” music works for everyone. Music with no structure can be irritating or even unsettling. Gentle music with a familiar melody more often is comforting. But search around to find what produces a sense of calm, familiarity, and centeredness for you as an individual.

The sounds of nature often are incorporated into CDs made specifically for relaxation. For example, the sound of water can be soothing for some people. It can help conjure up calming images such as lying beside a mountain stream on a warm spring day. Birdsong may also be of use as an aid to help your mind slow down and release stressful thoughts.

Music Therapy

Because music has the potential to influence us both psychologically and physiologically, it is an important area of therapy for stress management. Music therapy can make use of biofeedback, guided imagery, and other established techniques to play an important role in the treatment of people with stress-related disorders. But due to the dramatic effects music can have, a trained and knowledgeable music therapist always is required.

When used in combination with biofeedback techniques, music can reduce tension and facilitate the relaxation response. It may be more compatible with relaxation than verbal stimuli, which may be distracting. 

— music is processed mainly in nonverbal areas of the brain.

Music may help people to identify and express the feelings associated with their stress. In a music therapy session, the client can express these emotions, providing an important cathartic release.

Producing music in an improvisational way, and discussing pieces of music and lyrics in a group, can also help us become more aware of our emotional reactions and share them constructively with the group.

Thinking More Clearly

Finally, listening to music can help the brain by improving learning and memory skills, always useful when we’re under stress. This has come to be known as “The Mozart Effect.” Experiments carried out by scientists at the University of California at Irvine found that students’ test scores improved after listening to a recording of Mozart, compared with either a relaxation tape or silence. This may be because the processing of music shares some of the same pathways in the brain as memory.

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

What can music teach us about the brain? What can the brain teach us about music? And what can both teach us about ourselves?

 In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin (The World in Six Songs and The Organized Mind) explores the connection between music - its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it - and the human brain. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, Levitin reveals:

• How composers produce some of the most pleasurable effects of listening to music by exploiting the way our brains make sense of the world
• Why we are so emotionally attached to the music we listened to as teenagers, whether it was Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre
• That practice, rather than talent, is the driving force behind musical expertise
• How those insidious little jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our head

Taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin poses that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. A Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist, This Is Your Brain on Music will attract readers of Oliver Sacks and David Byrne, as it is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human nature.

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

What can music teach us about the brain? What can the brain teach us about music? And what can both teach us about ourselves?

 In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin (The World in Six Songs and The Organized Mind) explores the connection between music - its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it - and the human brain. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, Levitin reveals:

• How composers produce some of the most pleasurable effects of listening to music by exploiting the way our brains make sense of the world
• Why we are so emotionally attached to the music we listened to as teenagers, whether it was Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre
• That practice, rather than talent, is the driving force behind musical expertise
• How those insidious little jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our head

Taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin poses that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. A Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist, This Is Your Brain on Music will attract readers of Oliver Sacks and David Byrne, as it is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human nature.

Contact us +2348060350669.

sajirenike@gmail.com
@wonderkidzmusicacademy on IG
@sajirenike on Twitter
@wonderkidzmusic on Twitter

YOU WILL ONLY BE REMEMBERED BY WHAT YOU HAVE DONE

YOU










YOU WILL BE REMEMBER BY WHAT YOU HAVE DONE

(Late) Sister Abiodun Kumuyi (A JEWEL)

One day, in September 1972, a precocious man, approached a young lady in the streets of Lagos, Nigeria. He struck a conversation with her, and expertly steered the discussion towards a subject that was altogether new to the young woman. He told her about the lost state of all human beings; their helplessness in the face of domineering sinful habits; and the futility of any self-help effort to make a lasting change in their situations.

As she listened attentively, he proceeded to explain that man’s condition had turned him against God, his Creator. But he quickly told her the story of God’s love and interest in reconciling estranged human kind to Himself. He truly caught the interest of the young woman, who was soon confessing her sins, pleading for forgiveness and receiving Jesus Christ as her Lord and Saviour.

That young woman was Abiodun Olowu, at the time, a high school student in Lagos. She knew no church but wanted to learn more about the God that had changed and transformed her life. Through divine providence, she got introduced to a young University of Lagos lecturer in Mathematics, who was passionate about organising youths to meet with and serve the Lord. Abiodun was to be one of the privileged fifteen persons with whom the lecturer started the Bible Study group in 1973, which has remained till this day. The venue was Flat 2, University of Lagos Staff Quarters, deep inside the campus in Akoka, a suburb of Lagos.

It was the home of William F. Kumuyi, who will later become General Superintendent of The Deeper Christian Life Ministry, and Pastor of the Deeper Life Bible Church. Abiodun, then 20, wasted no time in settling down to digest the systematic and expository study of the Bible series undertaken by the Bible Study leader, as Pastor Kumuyi was then known. Thus, began for her, a journey that was destined to alter the course of her life forever.

Born to the Olowu family of Epe on January 7, 1952, Abiodun attended Baptist Primary School, Surulere in Lagos. She had her secondary education at the New Era Girls’ Secondary School, Lagos where she obtained her West African School Certificate. Thereafter, she proceeded to the Federal College of Education, Akoka, Yaba, Lagos, where she read Business and Secretarial Studies.

On September 13, 1980 in Lagos, Abiodun married her erstwhile Bible Study teacher, Pastor William Folorunsho Kumuyi. He had defied all pressures from friends and family concerning marriage, preferring instead to pray and wait for God to direct him to the partner He had chosen specially for him. God answered that prayer in Abiodun. The marriage was blessed with two sons, Jeremiah and John, both of whom were dotted upon by their beloved mother.

That marriage expectedly thrust upon her the role of a helper to her Pastor- husband. Naturally, she threw herself into the Women Ministry of the church. Through that ministry, multitudes of women were saved from their sins, and obtained other Christian experiences of sanctification and Holy Ghost baptism. Many became missionaries and preachers in their own right. The women ministry under her leadership saw the restoration of peace, joy and love to many homes, and reconciliation in many broken marriages and lives.

An energetic, dynamic and visionary woman, Abiodun Kumuyi, who was fondly called Mummy or Mama by members of the church, spear-headed the establishment of the Christian Women Mirror magazine. She used the magazine to teach women all they needed to know to be successful wives and mothers, accomplished and exemplary Christians and models of excellence. The magazine for which she was editor-in-chief until her demise, has become so popular that it is circulating far and wide and is highly sought after by readers who are no longer restricted to women.

Like every true child of God, she seemed to have had an inkling that the Almighty God was about to call her home. Speaking on the phone from her sick bed on Tuesday, April 7, 2009, she told her younger son, John: This is the last stage. He did not understand what his mother meant, but only realized after her transition to glory that she was passing a parting message to him.

Not even sickness would dampen her love and commitment to the Lord she served so faithfully and dutifully. She was unable to attend the Church’s Easter Retreat this year because of her sickness. But the messages from the venue of the retreat were transmitted to her by satellite in her home at the International Bible Training Centre, Ayobo, Ipaja, a suburb of Lagos.

On the morning of Saturday, April 11, 2009, she woke up as usual and joined the Faith Clinic session from the retreat venue on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. As she listened to her husband leading the congregation in soul-stirring hymns, she joined and sang with a surprisingly strong and clear voice. All her weaknesses seemed to have disappeared. Her face glowed as she sang along:

There is a new name written down in glory,

And it’s mine, O yes, it’s mine!
And the white robed angels sing the story,
A sinner has come home.
For there’s a new name written down in glory,
And it’s mine, O yes, it’s mine;
With my sins forgiven I am bound for heaven,
Never more to roam.

Those taking care of her were over-joyed at the sudden transformation. They watched as she sang happily, then, settled down to listen to the Pastor’s Message titled: The Shield of Faith, which stressed protection for believers, pulling down strongholds and preservation in the shelter of the Almighty Father. At the end of the message, she became engrossed in the prayers that followed; and as soon as she heard the final In Jesus Name, she said, Amen. Then, she turned her face, shut her eyes, and passed to glory.

She will be sorely missed as a loving, caring and amiable mother who was very fond of not just her two sons and husband, but the entire Deeper Life family. She was always together with the General Superintendent. They traveled together and worked together. He rarely got to any place without her companionship. Her commitment to the Lord was infectious and her love for God’s word was deep-seated. She touched many lives positively. No doubt, she has fought a good fight, she has finished her course, she has kept the faith. Praise God for a life well lived.