© 2004, 2009 by Daniel Carter. All rights reserved. Copying or reproducing any portion of this article without permission is illegal and will be prosecuted.

Yes, you can get the basics of how to read music in 10 minutes, but of course becoming a skilled sight reader is going to take very consistent practice. But if you spend 10 to 20 minutes a day increasing your skills, you'll make progress very fast in just a few months.

This information is a primer level. It's useful to any budding musician, singer or instrumentalist. It's meant to stimulate your interest and desire. This little tutorial will hopefully make you want to know more and perhaps enroll in lessons, or invest in other teach-yourself books available from music sellers.

There are three components in this primer course:

• Tapping your foot

• Clapping your hands

• Speaking the rhythms

This physical activity gets your senses involved, which helps solidify these principles as useful tools. You'll need to read all the information slowly enough that you understand all of it. Make sure you are able to completely focus on these exercises.

Ready? Here we go!

Rhythm is the length of time a note is sung or played. The following illustration will help in better understanding how different note values are related to each other.

This relationship between notes means that—

• Half notes will be played twice as fast as whole notes.

• Quarter notes will be played twice as fast as half notes.

• Eighth notes will be played twice as fast as quarter notes.

• Sixteenth notes will be played twice as fast as eighth notes.

Start by tapping your foot on the floor to a slow, steady beat. (Foot tapping = the underlying pulse which we call beat.) Now think in your mind, "1, 2, 3, 4," repeating.

Now, we will clap quarter notes and eighth notes:

1. For each foot tap, clap one time. Each clap represents quarter notes. Now do it again and say with each clap, "one, two, three, four." (And your foot taps match your clapping and speaking.)

2. For each foot tap clap twice as fast while the foot tap remains the same. This represents eighth notes. Now do it again and say with each clap, "one-and, two-and, three-and, four-and." (While your foot tapping remains the same, keeping the beat.)

As soon as you understand and are comfortable with the exercise above, move on to —

Clap half notes and whole notes:

Start by foot tapping a steady beat as before, thinking again "1, 2, 3, 4," repeating.

1. Tap your foot as before ("1, 2, 3, 4"), but clap your hands only on beats "1" and "3". These are half notes. Now do it again but this time only speak when you clap on beats one and three, like this: "one, three."

2. For each foot tap, clap your hands only on beat "1". These are whole notes. Now do it again but this time only speak when you clap on beat one (while your foot continues to tap out four beats), like this:

As soon as you understand and are comfortable with the exercise above, move on to —

Clap sixteenth notes:

Start by foot tapping slowly (quite a bit slower than before), thinking again "1, 2, 3, 4," repeating.

1. For each foot tap, clap your hands 4 times on beat "1" then on beat "2", then on beat "3", and then on beat "4". These are sixteenth notes. You might think in your mind, "one-ee-and-uh, two-ee-and-uh..." and so forth as you clap.

If quarter notes get one count then—

• Each foot tap and hand clap will occur together which would equal quarter notes.

• Each clap twice as fast as quarter notes would equal eighth notes.

• Each clap half as fast as the foot taps would equal half notes.

• Each clap one quarter as fast as foot taps would equal whole notes.

• Each clap four times as fast as quarter notes would equal sixteenth notes.

Time signatures indicate two things:

1. How many beats or counts will be in a measure or bar of music.

So far, beat has been indicated by steady foot tapping.  Rhythm has been indicated by hand clapping and speaking by counting the rhythm out loud. Sometimes the beat can be the same as the rhythm. But most of the time the rhythm is different than the beat. And so learning to count and clap the rhythm while keeping a steady beat (foot tapping) will help you get more comfortable with different rhythms.

So to summarize, below is an example of beat and rhythm being the same.

The next two examples are where the rhythm is different than the steady beat:

The next example is also a different rhythm than the steady beat. Practice it until it becomes easy to perform.

An interval is the distance from one note to another. To determine the interval of two notes, count the lines and spaces from the first note to the second. In the example below, count the number of lines and spaces from middle C up to the note F. (Count the line that middle C is on as “one.”)

There are two lines and two spaces, including the space the F is on, making this an interval of a fourth.

Take a moment and determine what each of the intervals is in the examples below.

Answers to the intervals above: 1. second, 2. third, 3. sixth, 4. seventh

A scale is a succession of eight notes in stepwise motion up and down.

Notice that the numbers one and eight are the same note name, but are an octave (eight notes) apart.  

If some of the notes in the scale were left out, the intervals would change from stepwise to skipping motion.  

For example:

Compare this example with the one above and notice that the numbers assigned to the note names did not change. The notes have the same numbers as they did in the one above, but notes 2, 4, 6, and 7 were simply eliminated.

There is a wealth of information on methods for learning to read the names of pitches. In the example above are the pitch names for the C major scale in the treble clef. Below are the pitch names for both treble and bass clefs.

Below is a little song that will help you remember all the interval names, as well as help you remember beat and rhythm.

For more information, links and other helps, click here.

Here is a great article to learn how chords are put together. This is great information for guitarists, keyboard players and performers of all kinds, and written by a professional studio musician.