The Young Person's Guide to Music Notation

A selection of example books covering music, art, photography, design and other creative subjects.

Creative Arts books

As the notes go up on the staff they get higher.  As they go down, they get lower.

Measures, also known as bars, separate the music into manageable chunks. Barlines, the vertical lines in between measures, separate individual measures.

This is a groove.  Notice that there are multiple different parts played at different times.

This is that same groove with a popping sound put on the beat.  Notice that everything feels like it fits with the popping sound.  This is the beat.

A beat is not just a drum groove.  A beat is a pulse of music that stays more or less consistent in the background of music.  Think of it as the heartbeat of the music.

Sing Sing Sing - The Jazz Ambassadors

Adele - Someone Like You (Official Music Video)

Queen -  Bohemian Rhapsody (Full  Instrumental Studio Version)

Christina Perri - Human [Official Video]

SOUSA The Stars and Stripes Forever - "The President's Own" U.S. Marine Band

A sound is a series of waves. The size of the wave (amplitude) gives the sound its volume. The number of times the peak of the wave hits a spot within a certain amount of time gives it its pitch (high and low) and the shape of the wave gives the notes its timbre.

Notes on the Staff are dictated by the Clef.

Treble Clef

Treble Clef used to be a G in calligraphy. The line that it circles (the second line from the bottom) then becomes a G.

The spaces of the Treble Clef spell the word F-A-C-E starting at the bottom and moving towards the top.

The lines of the Treble Clef are E-G-B-D-F.  

Note Identification

This is what it sounds like when the same lines or spaces are played but the clef is changed.

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Form is how chunks of music are put together.  Many Melodies repeat the initial part twice, then do something different, and then go back to the original idea.  This is form.  You can also look at form on a bigger level.  In popular songs, how the verses, choruses, and bridges are structured is also an example of form.

Types Of Musical Forms (Examples, Definitions, Lists) - Joshua Ross

Learn Form and Structure

Musical form

Music is usually written on five lines and four spaces that we call the staff.

On the staff, you will find almost all of the information that you need to know to be able to play the music.

Timbre is the actual sound of a given note on the different instruments that make it.  It is how you can tell the difference between a piano, a guitar, and a flute.

Different shaped Sound Waves Create different Timbres

Online Tone Generator - generate pure tones of any frequency

Time Signatures organize the time aspect of notes and rests into more easily manageable chunks.  These chunks are noted by beats and measures.

The top number of a Time Signature tells you how many beats are in a measure.

The bottom number of the Time Signature tells you what kind of note gets the beat.  (2 means half note gets the beat, 4, means that quarter note gets the beat, and 8 means that eighth note gets the beat)

Although this is usually the case there are some special exceptions. Time Signatures where the top number is divisible by three are one of these kinds. 6/8 is often played as two beats in a measure where the dotted quarter note gets the beat. There are also complex meters that take pieces of one type of time signature and add them to other time signatures (one beat of a 2/4 measure added to a beat of a 6/8 measure would become a 5/8 measure)

The tempo tells you how fast or slow to play the music. There are two ways to write tempo marks, Tempo Marks and Metronome marks.

Tempo markings use Words to describe a general speed (such as Allegro, Moderato, etc.). Most Commonly the words are written in Italian, but sometimes you will see tempo markings in German, French, Russian or even English.

Metronome markings give exact speeds that relate a specific type of note (usually eighth-note, quarter-note, or half-note) to how many times in a minute it should be played (usually between 60 and 180)

Style is how all of the other principals of music are organised and emphasized to create a unified genre of music.  

Marici Saxes: Libertango by Piazzolla Saxophone Quartet.

GRAINGER Irish Tune from County Derry - "The President's Own" U.S. Marine Band - Tour 2018

Sibelius : Concerto pour violon (Hilary Hahn)

Articulations tell you how to play a certain note.  This can include a specific length of the note (not for the amount of time it takes, but rather the amount of note that is actual sound and the amount of note that is released) and it can also show that a specific note needs special emphasis.  

A Metronome is a device that you can set to give you a set number of beats within a minute

This link will take you to a metronome that you can play with. Experiment with different numbers and see what the different speeds feel like.

Metronome

Harmony is a separate set of notes that goes with the melody.  It has different notes than the melody that sound good when played together.

This is what these two parts sound like together.

You can stack more than one other note of harmony. This recording has 3 parts of harmony underneath the melody part.

MOZART, 12 Variations on "Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman" K.265 (Alberto Lodoletti, piano)

Various Touhou music on a Schiedmayer Celesta

Beauty and the Beast [Alan Menken] // Amy Turk, Harp

Jean Rondeau records Rameau's Les Sauvages

TIMPANI SOLO, ETUDE #1 – SCHERZO BY TOM FREER

Tantrum for Snare Drum solo  Kevin Bobo

Eastman Percussion Ensemble: Fandango 13

"Caleidoscópio" by Gene Koshinski (two-mallet marimba solo)

001.2 - Brass excerpt from Mahler Symphony 2

Bach Cello Suíte 2 : Sarabande - tuba solo

Penny Lane - Canadian Brass Ensemble

Epic Low Brass "The Rains of Castamere" Game of Thrones (Cover for 40+ Low Brass)

Barclay Brass plays Eric Whitacre's Alleluia

Black Dyke Band plays Festive Overture - Brass-Gala 2016 (2)

Blast! - Malaguena

The Interval is the distance between pitches. There are two different types of intervals Melodic and Harmonic. Melodic Intervals happen with one note being played and the next being played directly after it. A Harmonic Interval is the distance between two notes that are played at the same time.

Generic Intervals

Specific Intervals

Interval Identification

Use the following exercise to practice identifying intervals.  All intervals are their generic equivalent.  You will see intervals that are both Melodic, happening one right after the other, and Harmonic, happening at the same time.

Melody is usually the main part to the music.  It is usually the part that you will sing along with.

The is the melody from the Rondeau movement of Henry Purcell's Abdelezar Suite

Tempo and Time Signatures along with notes and rests create rhythm. Rhythm tells you when to play, when not to play and for how long.

You probably think of percussion when you think of rhythm, but music for all instruments contains rhythm.

drumbit | online drum machine

Beats can be easily divided by some numbers. When the beat can't be easily divided, a number above or below note tell you that you are even dividing the notes into the time that another number of notes would normally take up.

Tuplet rests work the same as tuplet notes. Adding a number divides the beat differently than it would normally be divided.

Rests tell you that you should be actively silent.

Piccolo

Flute

Bansuri

Clarinet

Bass Clarinet

The clef tells you which letters go where on the staff.

The vertical position of the notes (Up/Down) along with the clef tells us what pitch to play. Pitch is the high and low of music (take care not to confuse high and low with loud and soft. . . those are different things and we will talk about them later)

On a piano, the white keys correspond to the letter names that we talked about previously

In terms of pitch, the distance between any two notes that are directly next to each other is called a half-step.  The distance between two white keys with a black key in between is a whole step.  Two half steps always makes a whole step.   

Texture is how certain types of notes and rhythms act together over time.  If the bass parts play down beats alternating between the first and fifth notes of a scale, and middle parts play only off beats, along with the melody in high voices this would create a standard march texture.  

Mozart: 12 Variations "Ah, vous dirai-je, maman" KV 265 (Clara Haskil)

This is the 12 variations on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star by W.A. Mozart.  It starts with a simple theme mostly in quarter notes.  Each time the theme changes, Mozart creates a new texture.  The music for each texture will sound similar to itself and will look fairly uniform in the written score.  

This is what it sounds like when two examples of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star are played with the notes being in the same places for both clefs. Notice the notes don't sound the same. It doesn't necessarily sound bad, but it doesn't sound like they are the same notes.

This is what it sound like when two examples of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star are played with the notes being corrected for the change in clefs. Notice that the notes now sound the same but in different octaves.

Saxophone Soli Showcase - The Jazz Ambassadors

Clarence Clemons- Jungleland Saxophone solo (studio)

Leo P at the BBC Proms 2017

Adele - Hello / Lacrimosa (Mozart) – The Piano Guys

Giovanni Bottesini Concerto for Double Bass No 2 in B Minor

Béla Bartók - Romanian Folk Dances for String Orchestra Sz.56 BB 68

If you need to extend the lines or spaces up or down, you can use ledger lines.

There are 7 letters in the Musical Alphabet

The Saxophone is also part of the woodwind family, but it gets some special consideration here because of the wide variation in Saxophone Timbre that you find in music.

Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano by Paul Creston

TKWO Yasuto Tanaka playing The Swan on Tenor Saxophone

Astor Piazzolla: Oblivion | Jeff Siegfried, soprano saxophone

Czardas by Vittorio Monti performed on baritone saxophone by Alastair Penman and Jonathan Pease

Oboe

English Horn

Daduk

Bassoon

Star Wars The Phantom Menace Music Video - [Duel Of Fates] - HD

Soweto Gospel Choir

Bulgarian women's choir, Dva Shopski Dueta

'Stand by Me' performed by Karen Gibson and The Kingdom Choir - The Royal Wedding - BBC

Summon the Heroes, John Williams - Trumpet Solo

Festive Overture National Trumpet competition Finals 2009 Juilliard

Sessions At Angel Recording Studios

Vienna Horns   Back to the Future

SF Symphony Horn Section Rehearses Mahler 7

Star Wars Horn Solo

The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra

An animated adaptation of Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra | LA Shorts

Britten - The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Score)

Britten: The Young Person's Guide to the orchestra [HD]

The Black Keys Have names that include the alphabetical name and either a sharp or a flat.

Not having accidentals when they are needed can make the music sound very different.

The is what it sounds like when accidentals are missing.

The is what it sounds like with the missing accidentals.

林英哲 ／ 海の豊饒（和太鼓アンサンブル）　　Eitetsu Hayashi // Fertility of the Sea (Taiko)

Zakir Hussain Meets Berklee - Ustad Zakir Hussain Tabla Solo

African UniquesTraditional Dance & Music Group-Djembe Rhythms

Notes with the same letter names sound almost the same. They can still be higher or lower but they act as the same note. We call this difference an octave because of the 8 notes it takes to get to back to the original letter name.

On top of putting the letter names in different places, the Clefs also tell you which octave a note is in.  The following examples show where the exact same note in the exact same octave would be in each clef.

Notes tell you that you should make sound and for how long.

Radioactive - Lindsey Stirling and Pentatonix (Imagine Dragons Cover)

Mikhail Glinka - Viola Sonata in D Minor

Erhu -  River of Sorrow 江河水

Hotel California Acoustic Guitar Solo

100 Greatest Guitar Riffs Of All Time (Part 1)

Bass Clef used to be a F in calligraphy. The line that it circles (the second line  from the top) then becomes an F.

The spaces of the Bass Clef spell the word A-C-E-G starting at the bottom and moving towards the top.

The lines of the Treble Clef are G-B-D-F-A.

Key signatures takes accidentals that would appear regularly throughout the music and put them at the beginning. That way they change all of the notes to that sharp or flat version

This is what it sounds like when there is no key signature.

This is what it sounds like when the key signature is there

Name

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