THE MUSICAL STAFF & SIGNATURES

INTRO TO GENERAL MUSIC: HOW TO READ MUSIC

THE MUSICAL STAFF & SIGNATURES

The next step to learning how to read general music is to get to know the staff of music and its different signatures. It's not a staff as in group or autographs guys, FOCUS! I'm talking music here.

Basically, the musical staff is a set of 5 lines and 4 spaces where basic music is written.

Now, this isn't the typical sheet of music that you'd see on sophisicated symphonies and stuff. So, we're gonna add to that plain ol' staff and give it a make over! YAY! :)

First thing's first, a musical staff contains clefs at the beginning of it. In all instruments, such as piano, we use both hands to play, of course. Well then, we'd have TWO staffs; one for the section that the right hand mainly plays in, and one for the section that the left hand mainly plays in (just keep in mind that your hands can cross & play in both areas of the keyboard). This is called the grand staff, since that's what complicated songs use. Since we have 2 hands playing, we usually put in the clefs treble and base to represent that the right and left hands are playing. Here's an example:

Grand Staff

Right hand mainly playing

Treble Clef

Base Clef

Left hand mainly playing

Next, we have to add the signatures of the staff. These are the time signature, and the key signature. See the numbers on the staff above (the last diagram that you just saw)? That's the time signature of this staff: 4/4. A time signature is used in music so that the beats played in a song are equally counted so it sounds good, and is easier to play with. Different time signatures are used depending on how slow or fast the song must go, or simply by how it'll be played. Other time signatures include 3/4, 2/4, and 2/3. The top number tells you how many beats for a particular note per measure. In the diagram, its 4 beats per quarter note (see the link to the page to "The Musical Notes") This time signature can also be expressed with the symbol , which means "common time", because many songs use this particular time commonly. And so, that means that all the notes and/or rests in a measure must add up to the total 4 beats as instructed by the time signature.

Then, there's also the key signature. This indicates what type of keys in a certain scale that you should play in (you can learn about different scales in this link to the page "Scales"). For example, let's say that the song that you were playing had this in front of the time signature, next to the clefs:

Oh hey! It's Yankee Doodle! What great song to practice! BONUS: If you want to take the challenge, try playing this piece when you've mastered how to read general music. Good luck! ;) Anyhow, see that sharp (#) in between both clefs & time signatures on the grand staff? That's actually the key signature! In this case, the key signature for "Yankee Doodle" is G Major (you can learn about different scales in this link to the page "Scales") This means that you have to play all the notes in the piece with the notes that you would play in G Major. To make things clearer, according to this song, whenever there is an F note being played, it is actually supposed to be played as F#, while all the other notes (C, D, E, G, A, and B) are played as naturals; just like in the G Major scale. This is why key signature is used in songs, so you know how the notes should be properly played to make it sound correct!