Musical form refers to the organization and shape of a composition’s elements, giving it a sense of structure and coherence.  Both popular and classical composers employ several standard forms, but their basic principle is the same:  repetition and contrast.

The smallest musical unit that a composer works with is the the motif, typically just a few notes having a characteristic rhythm and interval structure.  A composer will build a motif and expand it to a larger musical gesture or phrase of a few measures.  A second phrase may complement the first one creating a larger unit in what we typically think of as a melody.  The second phrase may start off with a repetition of the original motif, but it usually finishes somewhat differently than the first phrase.  The following melody from Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik exemplifies this two phrase structure:

Learn How to Read Music - Free Music Reading Lessons

By this time you may have some ideas for phrasing, dynamics, and articulations. Its time to start writing these ideas into your score.  You may still be polishing some technical problems, but that’s fine if you have a reasonable mastery of the piece.  Develop at least two different interpretations of the piece.  Try a few unusual ideas, they can help get the creative juices flowing even if you reject them in the end.

 If you are preparing for a performance, a new piece needs to be played out to really know if its ready.  Play it for anyone or thing who will listen.  A great acid test for how well you are prepared is to record yourself.  Set simple guidelines for this exercise: you are not going for recording quality, but for performance quality, that is,  to be able to play the piece from beginning to end, one take, with the mic on.  You should then try out the piece out on  a friend or two.  In this way, by the time you hit the stage, you will be fully prepared.

Learn How to Read Music in Under a Week

The speaker essentially said, “yes there are faster ways to learn to read music, but it’s important to still study classical music” (which I agree with by the way), but she didn’t even answer the question!! If there’s a faster way to teach people how to read music it needs to be taught. I’ve been saying this for years and FINALLY it sounds like people are starting to listen. Music theory, learning to read music, and fundamental music education don’t have to be antiquated, but they are in the normal ways music are taught. If you want a way to learn how to read music fast and easy, in a manor that keeps up with the latest advancements in how people learn the quickest, check out Speedy Music Reading

You can read the whole article at http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/nov/05/state-music-education-schools/

The next step is to set and understand your goals in learning your new piece of sheet music.  There are several possible reasons for studying a new work:  for personal enjoyment, to develop a particular technique (etudes for example), to explore a particular style, or perhaps to perform at an upcoming recital.  You also may  want to decide right from the beginning whether or not you want to be able to play the piece from memory.

Develop an understanding of the basic form of the piece.  Identify its main musical themes and look for literal repeat sections of music.  When we then first sit down to do some note learning, we can use our understanding of the piece to break it down into smaller sections.  Some sections will be easier to learn than others, and they may be of different lengths, so try not to make any artificial time-goals like learning a set number of measures per day.  Instead focus on learning each natural section of the piece thoroughly and in order.  Identify any particularly challenging phrases and work on them individually.  Then start to connect the various phrases and larger sections together.

How to Learn to Read Music

You and your teacher have chosen a new piece to learn, and you are expecting this to be a mid to long term project, say at least a few months.  It is useful to have a clear approach to learning this piece that will maximize your practice time.

To begin with, listen to several different recordings of the piece.  This will teach you many things about the piece, but in some ways more importantly, you will hear more than one particular interpretation of the music; we don’t want to be tied to any one performance as being the correct one.

Free Music Reading Articles

Learning to identify musical intervals takes patience and practice over time, but the payoff is worth the effort.  Your understanding of music in general expands, as does your reading skills.  There are two parts to this component of ear training:  learning to sing intervals, and learning to recognize intervals when heard.  We will focus on learning an approach to singing intervals.

The first step really is to add ear training into your practice routine.  Schedule in five minutes a day.  Add it in somewhere as a break to your regular practice, in between technical exercises and pieces, for example.

Learning to Read Music System

He said something interesting about learning music and learning all those instruments. “I was just learning it all by ear, absorbing it rather than learning to read. I never learned to read music.” Bird learned to play difficult classical and jazz pieces by ear.

That’s impressive! It really is, but not being able to read music ensures you’ll never be able to play in a large band or orchestra unless all the other more capable and talented musicians have to “dumb down” their ability to the one who can’t read music. So my suggestion is that all musicians should learn to read music. It doesn’t have to be as long or as slow a process as you think. Check out this How to Read Music Program for proof!

  This cancels out a sharp or a flat and returns the note to its natural form.
Double Sharp - X   Raise the note by 2 half steps
Double Flat – bb  Lower the note by 2 half steps

Sometimes an accidental is written in the very beginning of a piece of music between the clef sign and the time signature.  There may even be a bunch of them on different lines or spaces.  This is called the Key Signature.  These accidentals last for the entire piece of music or until there is a change in the key signature.

For more information about how to read music with key signatures check out Music Reading Tips on Key Signatures.

Learn to Read Music Fast

Tie -  When two notes that are the same are joined together by a curved line (kind of like a smile mouth) the note values are added together.  This usually happens across a bar line. it looks like this:

Learn to Read Music with Tied Notes

 Repeat Sign - 

Learn to Read Music - Repeat Sign

In music, when there are parts that have to be played or sung over again, you will usually see a repeat sign.  Everything that happens between the two sets of dots is repeated. 

Accidentals (# or b) are signs that tell us to change the note we are playing, usually only by a half step.  When an accidental occurs in the middle of the music, it lasts for the remainder of the measure it is in, unless it is cancelled out by another accidental. 

We’ll be back next time with some more music symbols and more stuff to help you learn to read music fast.

In the mean time  here’s a good aricle if you want to know how to learn new music.