Learning to read music notes is surprisingly simple at its most basic level, although it can take some time to become proficient in it. Many people can learn to read music notes at a slow speed within a day or two of study, but it can take weeks or months to learn to sight read at a speed sufficient for playing all but the slowest songs.
The first step to learning to read music notes is to learn your way around the musical staff present in sheet music. Most commonly, this consists of five parallel lines. Notes are placed on this staff, indicating what note they actually are. The shape of the note and the proximity of the note to other notes gives clues for how the notes should be played.
Before you learn to read music notes you need to identify how you’ll be reading them. You do that by looking for the clef symbol at the left of the staff. The most common clef is the treble clef, which is what music for stringed instruments, most woodwinds, higher-pitched brass instruments, the right hand of most piano pieces, and the vocal ranges from tenor to soprano, are written in. The treble clef is also sometimes referred to as the G clef, because the lower loop of the clef circles the second line of the staff, which is the line the G note rests on.
To read music notes on the treble clef, you can use a mnemonic device to remember what lines represent what notes. Reading from the bottom up, the lines are E, G, B, D, and F. This can be remembered by the mnemonic Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. The spaces between the lines, again from the bottom up, are F, A, C, and E, simply spelling the word face. So the full treble clef, from the bottom line to the top line, is: E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F.
The other common clef used when learning to read music notes is the bass clef. This is the clef used for the left hand of most piano pieces, the bassoon, the bass, and the deeper-pitched brass instruments, as well as the low end of the vocal scale. The bass clef is also sometimes known as the F clef, because it loops around to rest on the fourth line from the bottom, which is its F note.
To read music notes on the bass clef, you can use a mnemonic device to remember what lines represent what notes, albeit not as easy a device as that for the treble clef. Reading from the bottom up, the lines are G, B, D, F, A. This can be remembered by the mnemonic Good Boys Do Fine Always. The spaces between the lines, again from the bottom up, are A, C, E, and G. This can be remembered with the mnemonic All Cows Eat Grass.
With those two clefs understood, you can begin to learn to read music notes. There are any number of small notations that help you know what key the music is in, what tempo it should be played at, and strange incidentals that come along, but these can all be learned later. To begin to read music notes all that’s important is getting to a point where just by looking at a note you know what note it is, rather than having to fall back on counting out the lines or spaces. This just takes time and patience, but once it happens, it will seem as easy as reading a sentence written in English.
