What do you think?
Rate this book
How To Read Music: For Beginners - A Simple and Effective Guide to Understanding and Reading Music with Ease
Music Reading Made Simple - Discover the Simple Step-By-Step Process to Learning How to Read Music ** A Successor and a Sibling to the Best-Selling Music Theory - From Beginner to Expert, by Nicolas Carter ** Bars, notes, clefs, staves, time signatures, common notation, musical symbols… Have you ever wanted to learn how to read music but it seemed too difficult and not worth the effort? Have you tried searching for information online only to find yourself more confused by the seeming complexity of music theory and written music? Do you think that being able to read music and sightreading is only reserved for professional musicians who have had expensive education? Do you want to be able to quickly learn how to read sheet music and have a proper understanding of how music is written? Do you want to advance your skills as a musician?This in-depth book is the answer you may be looking for. This is the straightforward and concise guide meant to show that learning this valuable and impressive skill can be made simple, easy and fun, for any musician, on any instrument, at any time. It is meant to show that there is a simple process to learning anything, and music reading is no exception. You don’t have to attend music schools or expensive private classes and courses; anyone can learn how to read music by being self-taught. This book is going to help you easily understand music notation and how it relates to music theory. Along with the provided images, sheet music scores and music reading exercises, it will help you to build a proper foundation of knowledge, understanding, and skill; a foundation that will help you move forward as a musician. Here’s a sneak peak of what you’ll A detailed overview of a typical musical staff and its elements. A detailed explanation on frequency ranges, clefs and their relation to note pitches. Everything you need to know about key signatures and how to interpret them. A thorough understanding of the circle of fifths. Best step-by-step approach to reading notes and chords. Solfege explanation. A complete guide on how to read rhythms, how beat is divided, note durations, rests, ties, dotted notes. Fundamental rhythmic blocks and how to create rhythm patterns. How dynamics, articulation and extended techniques are notated. A complex exercise set to practice your skills and start sightreading!- And much, much more... You can get this book today for a low price >> To do that simply scroll back to the top of the page and click on the Buy Now button.
- GenresMusicNonfictionArt
127 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 25, 2017
988 people are currently reading
258 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 20, 2022
In a Nutshell: A much, much better experience this time around. A part of it could be because of my familiarity with the topic. But this book is much more reader-friendly than its partner volume.
The reason why any trained musician from across the world can play a piece the exact same way is credit to the standard way of writing music. (This is specifically for Western music, though we can use the same ‘language’ to write any music.) Thus reading music is a skill that every musician (whether instrumentalist or cantor or conductor or composer) ought to have, and this in turn requires knowledge of both music theory and musical notations. These two topics are in turn co-dependent; you can't understand musical theory without knowing musical notations and vice versa.
I had read the first book of this series, Music Theory: From Beginner to Expert a few days ago and come away with mixed feelings. While the content was mind-blowing, the approach was too technical to be beginner-friendly. This book is much, much better in comparison.
Like all languages, music has rules, and knowing how (and how long) to play both sounds and silence are important. Sheet music doesn't just reveal the notes but also their length, their pitch, the volume at which to play them, their accidentals, their pulse,... Reading this book will ensure that you get a basic familiarity with these concepts, if not a complete understanding thereof.
The content covers every element important to sight-reading: scales & notes, notations for music and rests, chords, clefs & bars, nomenclature and explanation for tempo and volume, and so on. Basically, whatever information you need to read sheet music is provided herein. As my instrument of choice is the keyboard, having the information presented through keyboard/piano friendly examples is always to my advantage. But the author does cover other instruments and clefs as well.
In many ways, this is a less ambitious book than the first one and therein lies its advantage. Rather than trying to include everything under the sun, it sticks to its focus on “reading music” and doesn’t divert into complicated information. That said, a basic familiarity with musical concepts would still be helpful to you if you have to get the best out of this book. A rank newcomer will also find it helpful but a tad complicated.
I found this book a lot easier on the mind than the first one. Then again, I'm not sure if it's because of my greater familiarity with the content. As a self-taught musician, I wanted to streamline what I know and refine the concepts I was unfamiliar with, and this book served my purpose well. I also learned two amazing tricks of how to read key signatures quickly and how to use the solfege scale to practice pitch.
Definitely recommended to anyone interested in honing their sight-reading skills.
4.25 stars.
This book is available on KU.
The book uses the American musical notations for its purpose, though it does specify the relevant British term for the same notation in one section.
———————————————
Connect with me through:
My Blog | The StoryGraph | Facebook | Twitter
The reason why any trained musician from across the world can play a piece the exact same way is credit to the standard way of writing music. (This is specifically for Western music, though we can use the same ‘language’ to write any music.) Thus reading music is a skill that every musician (whether instrumentalist or cantor or conductor or composer) ought to have, and this in turn requires knowledge of both music theory and musical notations. These two topics are in turn co-dependent; you can't understand musical theory without knowing musical notations and vice versa.
I had read the first book of this series, Music Theory: From Beginner to Expert a few days ago and come away with mixed feelings. While the content was mind-blowing, the approach was too technical to be beginner-friendly. This book is much, much better in comparison.
Like all languages, music has rules, and knowing how (and how long) to play both sounds and silence are important. Sheet music doesn't just reveal the notes but also their length, their pitch, the volume at which to play them, their accidentals, their pulse,... Reading this book will ensure that you get a basic familiarity with these concepts, if not a complete understanding thereof.
The content covers every element important to sight-reading: scales & notes, notations for music and rests, chords, clefs & bars, nomenclature and explanation for tempo and volume, and so on. Basically, whatever information you need to read sheet music is provided herein. As my instrument of choice is the keyboard, having the information presented through keyboard/piano friendly examples is always to my advantage. But the author does cover other instruments and clefs as well.
In many ways, this is a less ambitious book than the first one and therein lies its advantage. Rather than trying to include everything under the sun, it sticks to its focus on “reading music” and doesn’t divert into complicated information. That said, a basic familiarity with musical concepts would still be helpful to you if you have to get the best out of this book. A rank newcomer will also find it helpful but a tad complicated.
I found this book a lot easier on the mind than the first one. Then again, I'm not sure if it's because of my greater familiarity with the content. As a self-taught musician, I wanted to streamline what I know and refine the concepts I was unfamiliar with, and this book served my purpose well. I also learned two amazing tricks of how to read key signatures quickly and how to use the solfege scale to practice pitch.
Definitely recommended to anyone interested in honing their sight-reading skills.
4.25 stars.
This book is available on KU.
The book uses the American musical notations for its purpose, though it does specify the relevant British term for the same notation in one section.
———————————————
Connect with me through:
My Blog | The StoryGraph | Facebook | Twitter
December 25, 2022
Amazing Book And Very Simple
December 29, 2021
I want to listen more appreciatively to the music I like best so I’m starting to review (in some cases, learn from scratch) aspects of music theory that I haven’t looked at since I was a youngster. If you’re familiar with the material, it only takes a matter of hours to go through this book.
This is a pretty good basic introductory review of musical notation, though it contains a surprising number of typos and grammatical errors. Also, the book is 143 pages long, not the 84 pages indicated on Goodreads.
It covers the basics – staffs, clefs, key and time signatures, solfege, bars, rests, repeats, codas, segnos, reading notes and rhythms, dynamics, phrasing, and so on. I learned new things, e.g., about conventions used in musical notation software (which didn’t exist in the prehistoric mists when I learned this material), and in areas of music I hadn’t bothered with because it’s irrelevant to keyboards (e.g., annotating percussion rhythms, details about the tenor and alto clefs, clefs for instruments such as woodwinds, etc.).
It has written exercises, but not many. I would have liked more since, for me, learning musical theory involves acquiring skills via drills. Something useful was the link the author provided to the International Music Score Library Project, http://imslp.org. And, for that matter, even www.blanksheetmusic.net. Now I’ll go look for a book on theory more broadly speaking.
This is a pretty good basic introductory review of musical notation, though it contains a surprising number of typos and grammatical errors. Also, the book is 143 pages long, not the 84 pages indicated on Goodreads.
It covers the basics – staffs, clefs, key and time signatures, solfege, bars, rests, repeats, codas, segnos, reading notes and rhythms, dynamics, phrasing, and so on. I learned new things, e.g., about conventions used in musical notation software (which didn’t exist in the prehistoric mists when I learned this material), and in areas of music I hadn’t bothered with because it’s irrelevant to keyboards (e.g., annotating percussion rhythms, details about the tenor and alto clefs, clefs for instruments such as woodwinds, etc.).
It has written exercises, but not many. I would have liked more since, for me, learning musical theory involves acquiring skills via drills. Something useful was the link the author provided to the International Music Score Library Project, http://imslp.org. And, for that matter, even www.blanksheetmusic.net. Now I’ll go look for a book on theory more broadly speaking.
December 8, 2019
Comprehensive beginner musicianship, very good
I thought the book was very well thought out, and written with the non-musician in mind. I have been a voice teacher for 38 years, and I will be using this book to teach my students.
I thought the book was very well thought out, and written with the non-musician in mind. I have been a voice teacher for 38 years, and I will be using this book to teach my students.
January 15, 2019
Great read and reminder
Very articulate and right to the point. Easy to understand and apply. I specially liked the circle of 5 section
Very articulate and right to the point. Easy to understand and apply. I specially liked the circle of 5 section
April 25, 2021
Only basics are there. I think some notations related to articulation are missing. Overall book is very good explained in very easy way.
November 4, 2023
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Nice introduction; it really helped. Although the author used some unfamiliar words that made it hard for me to understand without researching what they mean in music.
Nice introduction; it really helped. Although the author used some unfamiliar words that made it hard for me to understand without researching what they mean in music.
May 6, 2025
A good introduction. (3stars is worth reading on my scale, 4 & 5 reserved for my favorites).
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews