How to Read Sheet Music – A Beginner Walkthrough

The staff and the two clefs

Music is written on a staff of five lines and four spaces. A clef at the left edge tells you which notes those lines represent. The treble clef (also called the G clef) is used by the right hand; the bass clef (F clef) is used by the left.

Piano music uses both, joined by a brace — the two staves are read at the same time, top for the right hand and bottom for the left. Middle C sits on a short ledger line between them, which is exactly where it sits on the keyboard.

Naming the notes on each staff

On the treble staff, the five lines from bottom to top spell E, G, B, D, F. The four spaces between them spell F, A, C, E. On the bass staff the lines are G, B, D, F, A and the spaces are A, C, E, G.

Both staves follow the same alphabet, just starting lower. Once you can name one line you can name the rest by stepping up or down a letter at a time — including the black keys, which appear as sharps or flats in front of a note.

Note values: how long each note lasts

The shape of a note tells you its duration, not its pitch. A whole note has no stem, a half note has a hollow head, a quarter note has a filled head, and the more flags or beams a note has the shorter it is.

Durations are relative: one whole note equals two half notes, four quarter notes or eight eighth notes. That relationship is what a time signature organises into bars.

• Whole note — four beats in 4/4. The longest note you meet as a beginner.
• Half note — two beats. Two halves fill one bar of 4/4.
• Quarter note — one beat. The default pulse of most songs.
• Eighth note — half a beat. Two of them per quarter note; this is where "1 and 2 and" counting starts.
• Sixteenth note — a quarter of a beat. Common in fast ornaments and runs.

Rests, time signatures and repeat signs

Every note value has a matching rest: silence of the same length. A quarter rest is one beat of quiet, and piano music is full of them — the spaces matter as much as the notes.

The time signature at the start of a piece has two numbers. The top one says how many beats are in a bar, the bottom one says which note value counts as one beat. 4/4 means four quarter-note beats per bar; 3/4 means three, which is why waltzes feel like they rock.

Repeat signs are two dots before a double bar line: play that section again. You will meet one in almost every song on this site, because most melodies are two phrases played twice.

From the staff to the keyboard

Reading and playing meet at the keyboard. Middle C is the note on the ledger line between the staves, and on our online piano it is the key labelled t. From there you step up the white keys for the notes that ascend on the staff, and reach for the black keys whenever a sharp or flat appears.

If reading is still slow, you do not have to wait for it. The song pages on this site give letter notation so you can play today, and the staff reading improves in the background as you go.