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Ten Famous Guitar Pioneers
Regardless of style, certain guitarists have made their mark on the world of guitar so that any guitarist who comes along after them has a hard time escaping their legacy. You'll find here, in chronological [more…]
How to Read the Circle of Fifths
Understanding how to read the circle of fifths will help you understand the relation between music's major keys and their relative minor keys. A major key and its relative minor use the same key signature [more…]
How to Read Key Signatures
Key signatures are important when reading music. You must understand how to read key signatures in order to know how to play the notes the way the composer intended. The key signature is a grouping of [more…]
What Is Music Theory?
Understanding music theory means knowing the language of music. The main thing to know about music theory is that it is simply a way to explain the music we hear. Music had existed for thousands of years [more…]
How to Recognize the Beat in Music
Recognizing the beat in a song means finding the pattern and speed of the music. If you know how to recognize the beat, you can control all of the other elements of the music. [more…]
How Musical Notes Are Constructed
You couldn't read or write music without notes. If you think of music as a language, the notes are like letters of the alphabet. If you know how to recognize the notes, you can learn the language. [more…]
Understanding Half Steps and Whole Steps
The distance between any two musical notes is called and interval. In Western musical notation, the smallest interval is the half step, or semitone. A [more…]
How to Read Music Note Values
Reading music notes means understanding the value of each note (that is, how long each note lasts) and how notes fit together in sheet music. To know how to read music notes, you'll need to learn the different [more…]
How to Read the Rests in Music
Knowing when not to play notes during a song is as important as knowing the notes you do play. Understanding how to read rests will help you keep up with the beat and pacing of the music. Sometimes the [more…]
How to Read the Key Signature to Determine What Key to Play
Knowing how to read the key signature to determine what key to play is critical to reading music, but it isn't difficult. Count the number of sharps or flats in the key signature, and then you can use [more…]
Note Names in the U.S. and U.K.
In the world of music, you may encounter different names for the many notes used. The U.S. and U.K. standard terms differ, but the U.S. names — which were originally translated from the German names for [more…]
Extending Notes with Dots and Ties
All notes have a certain value, indicated by the size and shape of the note, that determines how long a pitch should be held by the voice or an instrument. Sometimes, however, you want to add to the value [more…]
Understanding Simple and Compound Time Signatures
Written music always contains a time signature, which looks like a fraction and is found at the beginning of a piece of music. In the time signature, the upper number represents the number of beats per [more…]
Measuring the Distance between Pitches with Intervals
The distance between two musical pitches is called an interval. Intervals are important to music because they build scales and chords. In other words, music gets its richness from intervals. Composers [more…]
How to Read Note Values
The page you are looking for was recently moved. Don't worry, it's still here; it just has a new address: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-read-music-note-values.html [more…]
