Intro to the Basics of Music Notation

I'm going to begin this "Music Literacy Monday" campaign as if the reader has absolutely no experience or understanding of music notation, so please forgive me if what I post today comes across as extremely elementary; it won't always be this basic.

Imagine, if you will…

a teacher on the West Coast who is telling a story that he made up to his class. That teacher writes down the story, using letters, punctuation, and even italics to represent words that should be emphasized, then mails his written story to a friend on the East Coast who is also a teacher. That teacher then reads aloud the written words of the story to her class, and the story, although it is read by a different person in a completely different geographic location, sounds extremely similar to the story as it was read by the original author.

Music notation parallels the written word in many ways; just as the written words represent the story as it was told aloud, enabling it to be reproduced as it was originally intended by the author, music notation allows a piece of music to be reproduced aurally as it was originally intended by the composer—and with a very high degree of accuracy.

But it's all Greek to me!

When people who are unable to read music look at written music, the "scribbles" on the page often (and understandably) look like Greek to them. But rest assured—even though the music can look like a foreign language, it's not nearly as difficult to learn. Each one of those scribbles is simply telling the person reading the music one of five things:

1. How long a note or rest should last (the duration)
2. How high the sound should be (the pitch)
3. How fast the music should be played (the tempo)
4. How loud the music should be played (the dynamics)
5. What section of the music to play next (directional symbols)

When you realize that practically every symbol in music fits in one of these categories, the task of learning to read and understand music notation is greatly simplified.