For any child engaged in learning to play an instrument, one of the significant hurdles in his musical education is the point when he has to make sense of sheet music.  The arcane bars and symbols found in the pages of any conventional music book can, after all, be daunting to understand, regardless of one’s age.  Musical notes are a language all their own, at once both foreign and universal, within which lie the keys to practically all the music composed in human history.  Translating them into melodies and songs that your child can play is a necessary step for his advancement, but it need not be a painful one.

Letters to Sounds

Most children first learn their notes as letters that correspond to positions on the instrument that they play – finger placements on strings with a string instrument, holes and keys with woodwinds and brass instruments, and key combinations on the piano.  Once your child has grown accustomed to these letter codes, he can begin to associate them with the positions of the notes as they appear on the scale.  Most instruments use the treble clef scale, also known as the G-clef scale, which can be identified by the swirling symbol that looks like an elaborate “S” before each set of notes.  There are five lines on the G-clef scale, and the notes on these lines, in ascending order, would be E, G, B, D, and F, respectively.  The notes in the spaces in between, on the other hand, would be F, A, C and E.  Two popular mnemonics to help your child remember the note positions are “Every Good Boy Does Fine” for the line notes, and the simple FACE for the space notes.  

A Measure of Time

The notes themselves are shaped differently, depending on the relative length of time each note should be played.  So that your child may appreciate the distinction, tap out a series of beats in such a way that four beats can be tapped out in one second.  Say “1-2-3-4” out loud as you tap this pattern repeatedly.  Explain to your child that each type of note is played for as long as up to four beats, and that different notes should be played at different speeds.  By way of visual aid, provide your child with a large note chart showing what each note looks like, from the whole note to the eighth and sixteenth notes.  This way, he can see how a whole note is a simple ellipse, and every step towards a shorter note logically adds a small but significant change to the next slowest note.  

You and your child will notice that the scale is divided into sections by vertical lines.  Each of these sections is known as a measure, which is used to set the timing for the notes to be played.  Show your child how all measures have the same number of beats, so that a measure containing a single whole note should take the same amount of time to get through as four quarter notes.  

There will also be parts on the scale, in certain measures, where your child will be expected to pause and not play anything, for varying intervals, similar to the time differences of notes.  These periods are known as rests.  Your child may understand this concept more clearly if you tap out the “1-2-3-4” beat as before, but deliberately not say one or more numbers out loud.  As such, your child will realize that the pattern is the same, with rests as new, peculiar kinds of notes – notes of silence.

Reading sheet music may seem complicated, but it is fundamentally a simple matter of timing and playing of the correct notes.  Once your child can appreciate these basic concepts, he should be well on his way to deciphering sheet music like a seasoned professional.