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How To Read Sheet Music: A

Step-by-Step Guide
Wondering how to read sheet music? In this article, we give a full
introduction to the language of music and free tools for your music
journey.

Musicnotes
Apr 28, 2023 • 11 min read

Have you ever heard a song on the radio and thought, “Hey,
it’d be really cool to know how to play that, I wonder what
the music notes are?” Do you have friends who play musical
instruments, and you want to join in on the fun? Do you
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 think!

At its very simplest, music is a language just like you’d read

aloud from a book. The symbols you see on pages of sheet
music have been used for hundreds of years. 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 on. Learning how
to read music really does open up a whole new world to
explore!

Follow our step-by-step introduction to reading music and,

with a little practice, you’ll be playing along in no time. Keep
reading to the end for some free tools and sheet music
arrangements to help you learn.

How to Read Music

Step 1: Learn the Basic Symbols of Musical 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 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. Sheet music notes,
represented by lines and spaces, are 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
 y, p , j
“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.”

Sheet Music Symbols and Notes on a Staff

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.
All music notes have a note head, either filled (black) or
open (white). Where the note head sits on the staff (either on
a line or 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 (known as a
ledger 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 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 with beams 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. Follow along with the sheet
music for “Alouette” to see how beams organize notes!

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

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 are in a measure, the space between each
vertical line (called a bar). The bottom number tells you the
note value (the length) of each beat.

In the example above, the time signature is 4/4, meaning

there are four beats per bar and that every quarter note gets
one beat. Click here to listen to sheet music written in 4/4
time, 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 three beats per bar and that every quarter note
gets one beat. Click here to listen to sheet music written in
3/4 time, 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 four beats per bar, there aren’t four notes in
the second bar. That’s because you have two quarter notes
and one half note, which added together equal four beats.

In addition to your note values and time signature, the last

piece to feeling the rhythm is knowing your tempo, defined
by the 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. For example, a tempo of 60 BPM
(beats per minute) means you play 60 of the signified notes
every minute or a single note every second. Likewise, a
tempo of 120 doubles the speed to two notes every second.
You may also see Italian words like “Largo,” “Allegro,” or
“Presto” at the top of your sheet music, which signifies
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 sheet

music! Next, 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 the C major scale and the last is an example of an
octave. We recommend practicing the C major scale as much
as possible, since knowing it makes it easier to learn the
other major scales. Each of the notes of the C major scale
corresponds with a white key on your keyboard. Here’s how
the C major scale looks on a staff and how that corresponds
to the keys on your keyboard:
Notice that as the notes ascend the staff, and move to the
right on your keyboard, the pitch of the notes become 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 the C scale is a whole step. However,
the distance between the E and the F keys in the 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 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. For now, let’s focus only 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. A sharp, 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. 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.
The last key to learning how to read music is understanding
key signatures. As an example, 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. 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 there’s a natural
symbol to override it. You will begin to recognize the key
signatures of pieces based on which sharps or flats are
shown. Here’s a quick glimpse at some key signatures using
sharps and flats:

Step 4: Free Tools to Help You Learn

Step : ee oo s to e p ou ea

The steps above are a great place to start as you learn to read
music. To help you along on your musical journey, we’ve also
created a few free tools to begin practicing with.

First, download a free arrangement of “Mary Had a Little

Lamb.” Just add the song to your cart and proceed through
checkout. For more variety, check out the rest of our sheet
music for beginners, all of which you’ll be able to play using
the steps above. Play popular hits like the Star Wars Theme,
“Let It Go” from ‘Frozen’, “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen,
and more. We’re adding new Beginner Notes daily, so be sure
to check back often and learn to play all your favorite songs!

We’ve also created a helpful guide for lettering the keys on

your keyboard or piano. Download your Keyboard Note
Guide here to print, fold, and place on your keyboard. Once
you become familiar with the keys, you can easily remove it
and continue to strengthen your note-reading skills.

Finally, don’t forget to download the free Musicnotes app!

Enjoy instant access to all your Musicnotes sheet music files,
plus tools and features created by musicians, for musicians.
As you progress and learn how to read sheet music, your
collection of arrangements will grow. Our app makes it easy
to keep everything organized on the go. If you have any
additional questions or need help finding songs to practice,
reach out to our team of experts and we’ll be happy to help.
Good luck and, most importantly, have fun!
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