Lead sheets are a great way to write down the form of a tune without using too many pages.
While these may not be as comprehensive as a score, these are great for the improvising musician. You are most probably going to be given one when playing jazz standards.
In this blog we will look into the basics of staff notation, as well as note values, rest values, dots, and ties.
And don't worry, I will be writing more of those '5 Simple Melodic Phrases' in 2023.
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Lines, Spaces, Clefs, & Time Signature
Let's begin with understanding what the staff consists of before we add rhythms and notes to write music:
Lines & Spaces are pretty self-explanatory in the picture above. The 5 lines represent the following set of note (from bottom to top): E G B D F. While the 4 spaces represent: F A C E. For writing note above or below the range of the staff, we draw extra short lines called Ledger lines.
The Treble Clef refers to the music being within the treble register (ranging from an E note above middle C to an F note further above an octave).
The Bass Clef refers to the music being within the bass register (ranging from a G note 2 octaves below middle C to an A note right below the same).
Time Signature refers to the number of beats in a bar. CLICK HERE to understand this in-depth. For this blog we will stick to 4/4 for the sake of simplicity.
We divide the piece of music based on the time signature into what we call Bars/Measures. A row of bars is refered to as a System.
Single & Double Barlines, Final Barlines, & Repeats
Single Barlines separate each measure of the music, making it easier for the eyes to visualise and analyse better.
Double Barlines are used at the end of a section of music.
Final Barlines are used at the end of the music to convey that the music is over.
Repeat Start & Repeat End are pretty self-explanatory. Try to remember that the 2 dots are characteristic of each type of repeat. when the dots are on the right, it's Repeat Start, and when the dots are on the left, it's Repeat End.
Stem, Notehead, Note Values, & Beams
Every note consists of a Notehead (the circle-ish thing), and a Stem (the line attached to the Notehead).
The following are the most important types of rhythms everyone needs to know:
Whole Notes - 4 beats
Half Notes - 2 Beats
Quarter Notes - 1 Beat
Eighth Notes - 0.50 beats (half a beat)
Sixteenth Notes - 0.25 beats (a quarter of a beat)
Eighth notes contain one flag & Sixteenth contain two flags.
To make it easier to read, we Beam these two types of rhythms when there are more than 1 being used simultaneously, and we follow an imaginary barline to visually separate beats 2 and 3.
A dotted barline will be used in the picture below to show this imaginary barline. Please note that we don't draw this imaginary line on actual staff because, well, it's imaginary.
Let's look at what each of these look like on the staff:
Dotted Notes, Ties, & Rests
Sometimes, we may need/want to sustain a note slightly further, and this is where we use Dots & Ties.
Generally speaking, we don't often see Dots being used on Whole Notes unless we work with bigger Time Signatures.
Ties on the other hand, can be used on all types of Note Values.
Just like our Note Values, we also have Rest Values, which are simple the same note values but they convey silence instead of pitch.
Let's take a look at them now:
Triplets
Another important note value everyone must know are triplets. In most cases, we work with Half note, Quarter note, and Eighth note triplets.
Triplets are in theory, a 3-note pattern that's fit into the duration of a typical 2-note pattern.
So, a half note triplet is a 3-note pattern fit into the time duration of 2 half notes.
Similarly, a quarter note triplet is fit into the duration of 2 quarter notes, and eighth note triplets, into the duration of 2 eighth notes.
Let's see what they look like on staff:
Stay tuned for the next blog, where we will continue the study of lead sheets. And it will also be the last blog for 2022!
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