A person just glancing at a piece of music who has never had a course in reading music could scratch their head in wonder at all the little squiggles on the page. Some people play music and NEVER learn to read it. They play by ear or by a basic chord structure.
The only way some others play music is to read it. Having no written music they don't play. Their first music learning experience was one of learning to read written notes.
In order to learn to read music we typically use a well established system. Several hundred years of development went into the building of this system.
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Notes are placed on a staff. A staff is made up of lines(5) and spaces(4). Notes go onto a line or in a space.
There are 8 notes per scale and each has a place on the staff. The high notes are placed on the treble clef staff and the lower notes are placed on the bass clef staff.
When you place the two staffs together that is known as a great or grand staff.
In addition to notes that the beginner must learn to read there are also key signatures. Key signatures annotate which key a piece is played in. More specifically it tells the player which notes get special treatment with either a flat or sharp. Flats lower a tone by a half step while sharps raise notes by a half step.
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Next to take into account is the time signature. Those typically will look like two numbers; one riding atop the other. For example a 4/4 would have a specific meaning. In this case the lower note indicates the number of beats one measure of music gets and the upper 4 would indicate that there are 4 notes to the measure in which case they are called quarter notes with each receiving one beat.
These are the basics that every beginner to learning to read music must master. Additional information is also read by the player and is learned later. They learn dynamics, volume, tempo, style for example. These extra pieces often go a long way toward making the music sound more musical. You must add these extras to the correct notes to sound musical. If you want to understand lack of a musical quality listen to a computer play a sound file.
Learning to read music, therefore, requires much more than merely reading the notes and playing them at the correct point in the music. You must add expression and interpretation to sound musical.
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