Intervals can also have a quality: major, minor, perfect, diminished or augmented.  For our purposes here, however, we will focus on recognizing an interval’s size; and with a little practice, this is actually quite easy to do.

The following intervals are all thirds.  Notice that both music notes of the third are either on a line or on a space with no intervening spaces.

How to Read Music Notes - Intervals 2

So now you’re yet another step further down the line in learning to read music. Intervals are very important when it comes to learning how to read music notes because they’re the building blocks of chords… But now I’m getting ahead of myself. More to come soon!

A musical interval measures the distance between any two musical pitches.  Interval sizes are calculated by counting from the lower music note through to the upper music note. A to C, is a third. Notice that you count the A as one ( A – B – C ).  C to G is a fifth.  Except for the unison and the octave, intervals are named with ordinal numbers:

How to Read Music Notes - Intervals

 
See you soon with the next lesson on how to read music notes‘ intervals.

It is easy to imagine the pattern in the last post in a descending form:

How to Read Music Notes Exercises (Part 3)

Writing out and then saying aloud these patterns, in addition to playing them in different keys can help breath new life into our scale practice.  As a final example, here is a variation on the thirds pattern in F major, starting on the second scale degree:

How to Read Music Notes in F

You may need to adjust these exercises to suit the register and range of your instrument.  I hope you find that working with these kind of exercises will increase your music reading abilities, as well as your understanding of your instrument and music theory in general. Now you’re off to good start learning how to read music notes, and we’ll have a new lesson in the next few days!

4. Now try descending thirds:

C A F D B G E C . . .

5. Could you figure out ascending and descending fifths?  Here’s how ascending fifths starts:

C G D . . .

Once you have mastered these basic patterns, its time to look at them on the staff.  The first two exercises are really just ascending and descending scales respectively.  What perhaps is a little different, however,  is that these scale-like patterns can start on any scale degree. – What this means is that the music notes in this scale can begin on any note -  For example below is the same music reading exercise in G major that presents a series of continuous scales that start on each pitch in the key:

How to Read Music Notes Exercises

To familiarize yourself with the note names you can practice a few simple exercises away from your instrument:

1. Say the note names out loud in order starting on any name, through two or more repetitions of the musical alphabet. For example:

D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D . . .

2. Now reverse the order:

D C B A G F E D C B A G F E D . . .

3. Once you can say the notes backwards, try this pattern starting on any pitch:

 C E G B D F A C … 

This is an ascending thirds pattern. C to E is the interval of a third ( count C D E, one two three)  Notice that this pattern of ascending thirds repeats itself once all seven note names are covered.  This kind of patterning and repetition comes up a lot in music theory and is a common technique in almost any real learning system to learn how to read music notes.

The musical alphabet uses the first seven letters of the English alphabet as pitch-names:  A through to G.  Arranged in a scalar pattern the note-names begin to repeat themselves after G.  The next note one step higher than G, for example,  is A.  The note lower than A is G.  This is shown on the treble clef below:

We’ll see you tomorrow for another music theory lesson and fundamental lesson to help you learn how to read music.

We can also notice something about the relative minor keys.  We can simply count down three letter names from the major key to help with memorizing them.  For example, the key signature for A major is the same a F-sharp minor: A – G-sharp – F-sharp.  It is important to identify the pitch names with the accidentals of the key signature to make sure we get to the correct relative minor.  In the above example, its F-sharp minor, not F minor.

Let’s now take a peek at the flat keys.  We have already memorized the key signature with one flat:  F major/D minor.  We can observe that there is also a progressive order to these keys:  B-flat major has the same key signature as F major, plus an E-flat.  The order of the first four flats is:  B E A D-flat.

There is a simple trick to recognizing the major flat keys:  its name is the second last flat in the key signature.  A-flat major has four flats, the second last flat is A-flat.

So that’s a big key to learning how to read music notes. Once you are able to recognize key signatures up to four sharps and flats, you will find the remaining keys quite easy to learn.  During this learning process you will probably discover similar patterns as those presented here.

Below are the key signatures for up to four sharps and flats in both treble and bass clefs.  Take a few minutes to study these key signatures and then we will make some observations:

Notice that as we look at the sharp keys in the order presented, each new key builds on the previous one.  D major has F-sharp/C-sharp,  while A major includes the F-C-sharp of D major,  plus G-sharp.  From this, we can also observe that there is an ordering of sharps, the first four being:  F C G and D-sharp.

Remaining with the sharp keys for a moment, we can notice something else in the key signature that will help trigger our memory when identifying them.  The last sharp in a key signature is actually the leading note of the major scale.  The leading note is the last note of the scale before the note-names begin to repeat.  In the key of A major, the G-sharp leads back up to A.

There are many more observations we can learn, but this is enough for one post. More tomorrow to help you learn How To Read Music Notes!