Reading Music - Standard Notation

It is recommended that you first read the following lessons if you have not already:

• Scale Theory
• Chord Construction

I have been asked by a few of the readers here to talk about reading music. I don't read music much, but its actually pretty easy and very helpful. This particular lesson will cover really basic concepts in note reading. If you ever took a music class, then this will be nothing new. The only difference is we will be applying it to the guitar. The goal is to get you to know how to read and understand basic sheet music by the end of this lesson. 

This is a music staff: 
 

Notes are placed on the music staff on either the lines or the spaces of the staff. Like this: 
 

Notes can be placed in the spaces of the staff or on the lines. Where they appear on the staff will determine which note is played. In order to figure out which note corresponds with the ones on the guitar neck, we must first know which pitch the song is in.

There are four pitches:
 
 

 
Since this is a guitar lesson, we will be focusing on the Treble Clef and wont concern ourselves with the other pitches. Once you learn how it works, the rest will make sense..  

Here is a treble clef and its labeled notes.

A good way to remember this is by using the acronym, Every Good Boy Does Fine. The notes in the spaces spell FACE, which is easy enough to remember. If you read the notes from line, space, line space, you will get E,F,G,A,B,C,D,E. In other words, a staff represents a musical scale, or a musical octave. 

Sometimes you will see notes that are outside of the staff. These represent the notes and octave higher or lower than the notes in the staff. These are called "Ledger Lines". Here is an example of the various pitches of E using ledger lines. 

Now here is the exact same thing, only in Tab form:

E||-----------------12----||
B||------------5----------||
G||-----------------------||
D||-------2---------------||
A||-----------------------||
E||--0--------------------||

Fine, but what about Sharps and Flats?

As you have probably noticed by now, all the notes we have covered so far are natural notes. If we wanted to show a Flat or Sharp, we just add the Sharp or Flat symbols before the note.

This is a Gs (G Sharp) followed by a Gb (G Flat)

..and what about Chords?

Chords are fairly simple. Below the C chord is displayed in musical, chord and tab notation.  
 

All that we did was display the three notes used in the C chord at once. For more information on building chords, please see the Chord Construction lesson. 

Well, that's it for now. There is much more to cover on this subject, but we can save that for other lessons.