Understanding Chords in Sheet Music

Friday, March 02, 2007

Leaning to play piano in childhood is a long-term commitment with music that is a must adults cannot afford for a number of reasons, but especially due to lack of time that get them into fast crash courses that usually do not last more than one year.

It is not necessary to spend long years practicing the piano after learning its fundamental concepts and techniques if you concentrate your efforts in understanding stave, treble, and bass clef on the piano chords.

The stave is the system of five horizontal lines in sheet music on which musical notes are written to indicate rhythm and pitch of a melody. Lines on stave are numbered from bottom, the first line, to top the fifth one.

Notes on the treble clef are E, G, B, D and F, notes that you need to memorize. Notes between the spaces are easy to remember because they spell the word face: F, A, C, and E. Notes on the bass clef are G, B, D, F, and A, while notes in between the spaces are A, C, E, and G.

Remember that notes on sheet music are read from bottom to top, and that they can be written inside, below or above the stave. Some notes may be noted with a # symbol or a "b". These notes are the sharps and flats, meaning that sharpened notes are raised while flattened notes are lowered.

Sharp and flats are written in the stave as key signatures, showing up the key in which a piece of music has been written. Key signatures are written on the beginning of the stave, whether to indicate one or more sharps and flats on a determined note.

Although, there are other notations to keep in mind when it comes to music, such as relative minors, harmonic minors, basically you only need to understand how to read the sheet music and duration of a note (expressed as rhythm notation) to begin playing faster than you can imagine.