Music notation and theory have become a little ‘bypassed’ in the modern music-making world. With the advent of DAW multi-track audio and MIDI recording – where capturing a performance and correcting mistakes is just a mouse-click away – scoring music onto paper so that someone else can play it has become a bit of a dying art.
And if you’re in a hurry to make music, grabbing the gear and experimenting is so much more fun that wading through a complex textbook of opaque hieroglyphics…
But to completely ignore written music is to deny yourself acres of inspiration and deny thousands of years of tried and tested musical experimentation. It’s no coincidence that 99% of professional musicians are highly skilled and conversant (at least at a basic level) with music theory.
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You see, having a little knowledge of music theory can open many doors. Not least of all because certain instruments rely heavily on written notation and even if you’re ‘just’ a producer, being able to engage with your musicians on their level will help you generate the best performance from the musicians you work with.
‘Reading music’ might seem daunting, but it’s not all that difficult and the benefits come thick and fast.
How to read the stave/staff and understanding pitch
Think of music notation as being a little bit like an X/Y graph.
From left to right, you are provided with information that dictates rhythm and time. Meanwhile the ‘up and down’ element – which we’re discussing here – relates to the pitch of the notes.
As notes go up the stave, so does the pitch, meaning ‘higher’ notes. And as they go down… Well, you get the idea!
Rather than using a graph format, the notes themselves are laid out across a construct consisting of five parallel lines, with four spaces in between. This layout is known as a stave in the UK or the staff in the USA.
Each of the lines and spaces indicate a note pitch.
Need more room? It is also possible to extend above and below the stave/staff, using lines which musicians can draw in manually. These are known as as ledger lines. In theory, you can use several ledger lines in a sort of stack, but in practice, it’s more likely that you’ll only tend to use a few at a time.
What is the clef?
At the beginning of each line or stave/staff, you’ll see what’s known as clef sign. Clefs are used to denote notation for instruments or voices of different pitch, with the most common being the treble clef and the bass clef.
For piano or keyboard music things couldn’t be simpler. The ‘upper part’ – featuring the treble clef – is what you’ll play with your right hand. Meanwhile the ‘lower’ bass clef is what you do with your left hand.
And taking this theory further, a bass player would use the bass clef part for what to play (as they play lower pitched notes) while a guitarist would take instruction from the part with the treble clef.
And when every musician plays their different parts together, then you get music!
It’s worth noting that there are several other clefs, but these tend to be unique to particular instruments, predominantly from the orchestral domain.
So let’s start with the basics.
The treble clef
When learning clef note names, it can sometimes be useful to think of rhymes, to aid recall. There are some well known and well-trodden examples!
Working from bottom to top, the note names for the lines on the treble clef are E, G, B, D & F. This can be remembered as ‘Every Green Bus Drives Fast’, whereas the spaces conveniently spell-out the word F-A-C-E.
The bass clef
The bass clef adopts very similar properties, but the notes are slightly different; the line note-names are G-B-D-F and A, and as a rhyme, you could try ‘Good Burritos Don’t Fall Apart’, while the space notes are A-C-E-G, or ‘All Cows Eat Grass‘.
Much like production, or learning to play a musical instrument, repetition as part of practice will encourage the reading of notes to become second nature. Try to apply the notes on the stave to the instrument that you play, and you should begin to find that note reading will soon become second nature.
Try it.
It’s a good idea to concentrate on only a couple of notes to begin with, adding further notes as you gain more confidence.
Reading music is a skill like any other, and as a budding or improving musician, extending your musical vocabulary will quickly unlock areas which are linked to creativity.
Even if you’re the most creative and original musician you can’t fail to be inspired by looking at other musicians work and picking it apart. Music notation (and an understanding of what it’s telling you) allows you to do just that.
Keep practicing and have fun!
