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5 Ways to Learn Music Notes

Want to learn how to play music but don’t know how to start? Or didn’t concentrate on your music lessons back in school? Or want to get back to your old hobby which you left because of work and responsibilities?

Well, then worry no more, in this article you will learn how to get back to learning music or start from the beginning, even if you’re a professional music teacher you may find a few useful tips and ideas to include in your lessons. So, let’s get started.

The Staff

To start learning a skill we must first know its basics. In music notes, the most basic symbol is the staff, it is an arrangement of five parallel lines with four spaces between each line. The lines and spaces are marked with alphabets for reference and easy learning. Also, know that the lines are always counted from the bottom to the top.

Treble Clef and Bass Clef

The first thing to learn when reading music is the clef. The most common clefs are treble and bass clef.

Treble clef, also known as the G clef, is usually used for instruments and voices with higher ranges.

The music notes on the treble clef staff have the following symbols and mnemonics to aid in easy learning:

E, G, B, D, F, for the five lines from bottom to top, Every Good Boy Does Fine.

 F, A, C, E, for the four spaces from bottom to top, which spell out the word “face”.

Second is the bass clef or the F clef, used for instruments with lower ranges like the left hand of a piano, guitar with bass strings, trombone etc.

The bass clef staff has different notes than the treble clef staff and have the following symbols and mnemonics to aid in easy learning:

G, B, D, F, A, for the five lines from bottom to top, Good Boys Don’t Fool Around.

A, C, E, G, for the four spaces from bottom to top, All Cows Eat Grass.

The Grand Staff

A grand staff has the lines and spaces of two staves joined together with a middle C note between the two clefs. The left side is for the bass clef staff and the right side for the treble clef staff.

The easy way to memorize the Grand Staff is with the help of mnemonics mentioned above and sometimes with visual and theoretical aid too. The quickest way to learn it is to read out loud the space notes and line notes in each clef and to always learn notes from the bottom line or space to the top line or space of the clef you’re working on.

Reading out loud keeps your brain focused which helps in remembering the notes accurately. Similarly, you can test yourself by taking a music theory quiz, to enhance and challenge your music knowledge.

Ledger Lines

To show notes higher or lower than the normal range of the staff, ledger lines are used. These lines appear on the staff only when the music piece requires you to play a note above or below the grand staff. When reading a music sheet, it could be a difficult task to learn ledger lines but there are several techniques that make the learning easier and faster.

As a beginner, the first ledger line to learn is the middle C it’s located between one line below and above the treble and bass staff. Then there’s the high C which appears two lines above the treble staff and the low C which appears two lines below the bass staff.

Once you memorize these notes they act as your anchors and reading ledger notes becomes easier.

Practice

Now that we learned all the basics of reading music notes. It’s time for the most effective technique which is practicing. Practice and perfect different tempos, rhythms, and beats. If you’re a beginner invest in a guitar with strings made of nylon as they’re soft and easy on the fingers of the players and start from a digital piano as it’s convenient and cheaper until you perfect your skills to invest in an actual piano.

Getting a strong and reliable foundation for music note reading will enable in making your musical dreams come true.

Author Bio:

Ronald Ross is a passionate musician. He began playing the drum at the age of 7 and constantly perfects various music pieces of different genres so he could keep growing as a musician. He reviews a wide range of musical instruments at http://loudbeats.org/.

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