Ruggi.SiteMusic notation guide
An illustrated, interactive guide to reading written music: clefs and note names with a clickable staff and flashcards, key signatures, time signatures, note values with a bar-adds-up checker, dynamics, repeats, tab, lead sheets and drum notation.
Related: Guitar & piano chords · Music styles guide · Modes & composition · Ear training · Music theory tools (circle of fifths, transposer) · BPM delay calculator
Written music is a graph: time runs left to right, pitch runs up and down. This guide builds that picture step by step, with small interactive drawings made by this page (no images are copied from anywhere).
1. The staff and the clefs
The staff has five lines and four spaces, counted from the bottom. A clef at the start fixes which note each line or space means. Notes above or below the staff sit on short extra lines called ledger lines.
Click or tap anywhere on the staff to place a note. The name appears below. Clef signs here are simplified: the real signs grew out of the letters G, F and C, and the staff line they mark is the note they name.
Flashcards: name the note
Score 0 / 0 · streak 0
Uses the clef chosen above, notes from two ledger lines below to two above, no accidentals.
2. Accidentals
| Sign | Name | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| ♯ | sharp | raises the note by one semitone |
| ♭ | flat | lowers it by one semitone |
| ♮ | natural | cancels a sharp or flat (from the key signature or an earlier accidental) |
| x | double sharp | raises by two semitones |
| ♭♭ | double flat | lowers by two semitones |
An accidental written next to a note lasts until the end of that bar (for that pitch, in that octave). A tie carries it into the next bar. The next bar starts again from the key signature.
3. Key signatures
The sharps or flats after the clef tell you which notes are altered all the way through. Sharps always appear in the order ; flats in the reverse order, . These orders are computed here by stepping up (sharps) or down (flats) a perfect fifth from F or B. Each key has a relative major and minor sharing one signature. For the circle of fifths see Music theory tools.
Signatures are drawn here for treble and bass clefs only. Quick rule: for a key with sharps, the major tonic is one semitone above the last sharp; with flats, the major tonic is the second-to-last flat (F major, one flat, is the exception).
| Sharps / flats | Major | Minor | Altered notes |
|---|
4. Time signatures and counting
The top number says how many beats are in a bar, the bottom says which note value is one beat (4 = quarter note, 8 = eighth note). Simple time splits each beat in two; compound time (6, 9, 12 over 8) splits each beat in three, so the beat is a dotted note; odd (asymmetric) times like 5 or 7 group beats unevenly.
5. Note values, rests, dots, ties and tuplets
| Note (US / UK) | Rest | Share of a whole note | Beats when the quarter note = 1 | Dotted | Triplet member |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| whole / semibreve | hangs from the 4th line | 1 | 4 | 6 | 2 2/3 |
| half / minim | sits on the 3rd line | 1/2 | 2 | 3 | 1 1/3 |
| quarter / crotchet | zigzag | 1/4 | 1 | 1 1/2 | 2/3 |
| eighth / quaver | one flag | 1/8 | 1/2 | 3/4 | 1/3 |
| sixteenth / semiquaver | two flags | 1/16 | 1/4 | 3/8 | 1/6 |
| 32nd / demisemiquaver | three flags | 1/32 | 1/8 | 3/16 | 1/12 |
- A dot adds half the note's value (a second dot adds half of that: double-dotted half = 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 = 7/8 of a whole note).
- A tie joins two notes of the same pitch into one longer sound; their values simply add.
- A triplet fits three notes in the time of two of the same kind (each lasts 2/3 of its normal value). A quintuplet fits five in the time of four (each 4/5).
Does this bar add up?
Write a value as 1 2 4 8 16 32 (or w h q e s for whole to sixteenth); add . for a dot (.. for two), t for a triplet member, u for a quintuplet member, and put r in front for a rest. Example: r4 8t 8t 8t 2 Ties just add, so write both notes.
6. Dynamics, articulation and tempo words
| Marking | Meaning |
|---|---|
| pp pianissimo, p piano | very soft, soft |
| mp mezzo-piano, mf mezzo-forte | moderately soft, moderately loud |
| f forte, ff fortissimo | loud, very loud |
| cresc. / decresc. (dim.) | gradually louder / gradually softer (often drawn as hairpins < and >) |
| sf or sfz | sudden strong accent on one note |
| staccato (dot above or below the note head) | short, detached |
| tenuto (short line) | hold the full value, slightly stressed |
| accent (>) / marcato (^) | stress the note / stress strongly and shortly |
| slur (curve over different pitches) | play smoothly, connected (legato); on some instruments, one breath or bow |
| fermata (bird's-eye over a note or rest) | hold longer than written; how long is the performer's choice |
Tempo words (typical ranges, approximate)
Italian tempo words describe a character as well as a speed. BPM ranges differ between sources and between musicians; treat these as rough guides to beats per quarter note.
| Word | Meaning | Roughly (BPM) |
|---|
Also: rit. (ritardando) gradually slower; accel. gradually faster; a tempo back to the original speed; rubato flexible timing.
7. Repeats, codas, D.C. and D.S.
| Sign | What you do |
|---|---|
| Repeat signs (double bar with two dots) | Play the section between a start-repeat and an end-repeat twice. With no start-repeat, go back to the beginning. |
| First and second endings (brackets 1. and 2.) | First time through play the 1st ending, repeat, then skip it and play the 2nd ending. |
| D.C. (da capo, "from the head") | Jump back to the very beginning. |
| D.S. (dal segno, "from the sign") | Jump back to the sign (a stylised S with a slash and dots). |
| al Fine | ...and play until the word Fine ("end"). |
| al Coda / To Coda | ...and when you reach "To Coda" jump to the coda sign section near the end. |
| Coda | A closing section marked with a circle-with-cross sign. |
Typical roadmap: "D.S. al Coda" means jump to the sign, play until "To Coda", then skip ahead to the coda. Repeats inside the jumped section are usually not taken a second time unless marked.
8. Ornaments
- Trill (tr): rapid alternation between the written note and the note above it.
- Mordent: in common modern use, the written note, the note below it, then the written note again quickly; the inverted mordent uses the note above. Conventions vary between periods and publishers.
- Turn: a little four-note figure around the written note (upper note, main note, lower note, main note).
- Grace note: a small note played very quickly before the main note (acciaccatura, with a slash) or borrowing time from it (appoggiatura).
- Tremolo: slashes through a stem mean repeat the note quickly.
9. Guitar tablature and chord charts
Tab shows the instrument rather than the pitch: six lines are the six strings (lowest string at the bottom), and a number is the fret to press (0 = open string). Numbers stacked vertically sound together. Rhythm is often omitted or shown with stems above. Common symbols: h hammer-on, p pull-off, / and \ slides, b bend, ~ vibrato, x muted note.
The tab above: an open C chord (x32010 read from the low string up) followed by a short run on the first and second strings.
A chord chart (chord box) is the neck seen from the front: vertical lines are strings with the lowest on the left, horizontal lines are frets, dots show where to press, o above means an open string, x means do not play it, numbers on the dots are fingers (1 index to 4 little), and "3fr" beside the top says the box starts at the third fret. Generate and step through charts in the chord finder.
10. Lead sheets and Nashville numbers
A lead sheet gives only the melody, lyrics and chord symbols above the staff. Players fill in the accompaniment. Chord symbols you will meet: C major, Cm or C- minor, C7 dominant seventh, Cmaj7 or CΔ major seventh, Cm7 minor seventh, Cdim or C° diminished, Cø half-diminished, Caug or C+ augmented, Csus4, C6, C/E the chord C with E in the bass.
The Nashville number system writes each chord as the scale-degree number of its root in the key (1 to 7), so a chart works in any key. A number followed by m is minor; b7 is a flattened degree; a suffix like 7 is added.
11. Drum notation basics
Drum parts use a five-line staff where each line or space is a drum or cymbal, not a pitch. The layout below is the common convention (some publishers differ, so look for a key): kick drum in the bottom space, snare in the third space, hi-hat as an x above the top line, toms in the spaces between. The pattern shown is the basic rock beat: hi-hat on every eighth note, kick on beats 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4.
Notes on this page
- Octave numbers use scientific pitch notation: middle C is C4.
- Conventions for ornaments, tempo words and drum layouts vary a little between publishers and periods; this guide shows the common modern ones.