LESSON 1 - Musical Symbols

I've never met an adult who was sorry they spent time in their youth learning to play an instrument or sing.  I have met MANY adults that are sorry they didn't.  The good news is, it's never too late.  Music can seem very foreign if you're not familiar with it, but it's really quite simple to learn regardless of age.  I'm glad you've decided you've decided to learn a new musical skill, or improve what abilities you may already have.

One of the most intimidating things about music is all of the weird symbols that musicians use.  In this first lesson we're going to identify and describe a few of those musical symbols to you.  You'll find pictures along with the descriptions to help you.

STAFF:

The musical "staff" (as seen above) is the canvas on which the musician reads or writes music.  The musical staff almost ALWAYS consists of 5 lines and four spaces (between each line).  Each line and space is numbered from bottom to top.  The bottom line is line 1, the top line is line 5.  Directly above the bottom line is space 1 and directly below the top line is space four.  Numbering the staff should look like this:

In later lessons you'll learn to identify the name of a note based on what line or space it is written on.

MEASURES:

In a piece of music the staff is broken down in to smaller parts known as measures like these:

In the above example you will see that the staff has been divided into each section by the use of vertical lines.  There are three measures in this example.

BAR LINES:

The lines that divide a staff into measures also have a name.  They're called "bar lines".

Notice that there is a special bar line at the end with two lines instead of one.  This is called a "double bar line" and is used to indicate "the end" of a piece, or section of music.