Reading Music Explained
Music expert Eli Krantzberg presents a comprehensive set of video tutorials on reading music! If you've always been baffled when looking at a piece of music, and you wished you could better communicate your ideas to other musicians, this is the course for you. Eli takes you from the very beginning and walks you through the process, step by step, so it'll be a pain-free journey! There are even exercises along the way to make sure you're understanding the new information! These videos are for beginners wanting to learn the art of reading and writing music on a staff.
The Basics
• All Cows Eat Grass (06:13) - Let's start right from the beginning and learn about the staff, clefs, and the basic note names on the lines and spaces for the treble clef and bass clef.
• Anatomy of a Note (04:44) - Learn all about note heads, stems, and flags.
• Understanding How Time is Measured (05:54) - Discover measures (or bars), meter, time signatures, and tempo.
• Subdividing Beats (Rhythm) (06:06) - Explore the world of rhythm as we learn to subdivide the beats within each measure.
• Dots & Ties (09:59) - Watch how dots and ties are used to increase note duration by various values.
• Rests (05:10) - Rests indicate beats, or portions of beats, that should be silent and have similar durations as notes.
• Bass Clef Reading Exercise (09:06) - Explore some simple exercises combining what you've learned so far using note values of different durations, ties, dots, and rests.
• Accidentals (06:16) - Discover how to notate accidentals, or notes that fall outside of the naturally occurring pitches dictated by the key of the music. Sharps and flats are used to indicate when specific notes are to be played either a semi tone higher or lower.
• Key Signatures (07:17) - See how key signatures are used to tell the reader which notes are to be sharpened or flattened throughout a piece by default. Also discover how leger lines are used to extend the range of notes above or below the staff.
• The Grand Staff (07:09) - See how the treble and bass clef work together in a Grand Staff with a ledger line connecting the two.
• Reading Exercises (06:12) - This video contains some review exercises of the basics covered in this series so far, including reading rhythms, treble clef, bass clef, key signatures, tied notes, syncopations, ledger lines, and accidentals.
Beyond the Basics
• Triplets (08:26) - Discover how beats can be subdivided into groups of three instead of two or four. Whole notes are divided into three half-note triplets, half notes into three quarter-note triplets, quarter notes into three eighth-note triplets, eighth notes into three sixteenth-note triplets, and so on.
• Compound Meter (07:04) - Explore compound time signatures, where the main beat is divided into groupings of three pulses.
• Introduction to Articulations & Dynamics (05:46) - Learn about some of the basic notation markings that tell the performer how to play certain notes and at what volume or degree of intensity.
• Repeats & Section Headers (06:06) - Learn how to use double bar lines, section headers, repeat signs, first and second endings, and multi-bar repeats to make longer pieces of music easier to read.
• Codas & Endings (03:30) - Explore DC al fine and DS al coda markings, both of which are special instructions telling the performer when and where to jump to as they are reading a piece of music.
• Introduction to Drum Set Notation (05:38) - Discover some of the basic conventions used when notating drum kit pieces and cymbals in musical notation.