Title page

HOW TO READ MUSIC FOR BEGINNERS

A simplified step by step guide to learn the beautiful art of reading music within 10 days

Lillian Edinson

Table of contents

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION TO HOW TO READ MUSIC

I am a pianist, composer, and educator of music. For as long as I can remember, I've played the piano, and as a teen, I started composing. In addition to instructing music theory courses, I have taught courses in music fundamentals, ear training, and musicality at various colleges and have been involved in music for close to two decades.

I finally understood how poorly some students understand music and how it works from the inside out when I began teaching music theory and piano lessons. Many were able to play their instrument, but they experienced significant difficulties when presented with unfamiliar music that was not in the most basic of time signatures.

By writing this book, I plan to use it as a teaching tool to introduce students to the basic elements of music in bite-sized portions so that they can comprehend the information on their own and continually consult the concepts as needed until they have a thorough understanding of the subject.

My mission in this book is to instruct you on how to decipher musical notation from the start. It is my belief that every musician should fully comprehend the guiding principles of musical notation, rather than just the basics.

My objective as a teacher is to ensure that every student in my class leaves knowing everything about the material we've learned, and I won't be fully content until everyone who wants to learn has acquired this knowledge.

It should be noted, however, that if you ever have a question about this book or find yourself confused about something, please feel free to contact me. I am always on the lookout for new teaching resources, and this book will be updated periodically.

Keep going and have success on your adventure to learning how to read music.

Here's to your musical growth.

CHAPTER TWO: HOW BEST TO USE THIS BOOK

In the accompanying10 chapters, I am going to go over every concept needed to read musical examples one concept at a time. I will recommend you take one chapter each day for 10 days, with the goal of reading a chapter per day. Many of the frustrations associated with traditional rhythm teaching methods are eliminated when learning to read music by this method.

To facilitate understanding, music theory concepts are broken down to their most basic elements to enable you to simultaneously learn to read musical notation and understand music theory concepts. This will help you better understand the foundation of the music you are reading, which will support your more significant comprehension of the music's structure.

I encourage you to bring a pencil, three highlighters (preferably in red, blue, and green), so you could attend to a supply of small assignments and exercises when you read this book.

Also, each day the book is organized so that you read one chapter. You may, however, need multiple days to comprehend any particular concept. For the most part, you should only need to dedicate a day to learning the ideas. However, with topics such as chords and advanced rhythm, you will have to devote more time to truly get the hang of them. If you are not comfortable with the pace of one chapter per day, then do not worry about completing the book in a shorter amount of time.

CHAPTER THREE: THE FIRST DAY: RHYTHM

Today we will be learning about...

Introduction to Rhythm

Counting: Quarter notes and rests

Writing the counting on the score

Introduction to Rhythm

The two essential elements of each piece of music are pitch and rhythm. A good measure of music's creativity is the rhythm. Good timing of sounds and the patterns those sounds generate in time reflects a great deal of creativity. Another feature of music is pitch; in other words, how high or low the sounds are in the song.

Counting: quarter notes and rests

Let's start by understanding the rhythms before we learn how to read music. We begin by learning about the basic rhythmic value, the quarter note.

One beat equals one quarter note. Every quarter note gets one beat.

When you look at the beat in the beginning of the song, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," you can see a repeating pattern.

It is equally as important to have stillness and a time apart in music as it is to have the sounds themselves. We refer to this silence as a "rest". This will be the first of several sorts of rests we will talk about. The quarter rest receives 1 beat of time, much like the quarter note.

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 27.02.2023
ISBN: 978-3-7554-3375-0

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