Reading Music
You do not have to read music to make music, and plenty of excellent players never learned. But once you can, a lead sheet takes one glance. Here you learn it the way the rest of this site works: every note on the staff lights up on the keyboard and sounds as you tap it.
Two things and you can read a lead sheet.
The treble clef, plus the quarter note and the half note. That combination gets you the melody of almost any pop song. Chord symbols go on top of that, and they are easier than the notes.
Jump straight in
The time
- Note Values and Rests - the durations, with the silences that matter just as much
- Reading Rhythm - the tempo keeps running, which is the real skill
The page
In practice
Keep going
The other sections
Everything on this site sits in one of these, in the order they are meant to be learned.
How music works