As a tidy ending to this series on music theory, let’s test the music-reading skills we’ve learned with a few samples of real sheet music. (Don’t worry, you can do it!)

For each piece of music, remember to look for and study the following notations–doing it in this order seems to be most helpful for me, at least:

• Time signature
• Key signature
• Rhythms (how long you hold each note)
• Notes (what pitches you hit)

Sample #1: Auld Lang Syne

Image Credit: TrivWorks.com

An old favorite for New Year’s, likely one we’ve either heard played a good bit or sung. What time signature is noted on this piece? How about key signature?

(If you said “Common Time,” also known as 4/4 time, for the time signature, you’re right! That’s what that little “C” means at the beginning of the first measure, as we learned a few weeks back. Remember what 4/4 time means?)

Also, if you can’t find any key signature, don’t fret–there are no noted sharps or flats, which means that this piece is in C major. (It also could technically be in A minor, but seeing that the many Gs in this piece do not have sharp symbols beside them, it is most likely C major.)

Let’s look at the rhythms, too. Hmm, I see a lot of “dotted quarter followed by an eighth note” rhythms scattered throughout the piece, plus a lot of eighth notes strung together in pairs. What else do you see?

And lastly, let’s look at notes. For instance, how often does the note of C appear in this piece, since the piece is in C major?

Sample #2: Super Mario Bros. Theme

Image Credit: WiiNoob.com

Here’s a tune a lot of us gamers know! Let’s check it out and see what we can learn from its sheet music. First, look at the time signature and key signature.

(If you said 4/4 time and C major, you’re right again! As with Auld Lang Syne, there are no sharps and flats noted, but that’s a key signature in and of itself–C major.)

How about rhythms? I see quite a lot of eighth notes, but not just any eighth notes–they’re all quick little notes with some fancy-looking 7’s and something that resembles a curly brace in between them. The fancy 7 and the weird curly brace are both rests, which means that you quit playing anything for just a moment. (In the case of the Super Mario Bros. melody, you can probably hear the breath of space in between the struck notes–this makes the notes, when they are played, stand out a bit more, because there’s silence surrounding them.)

And speaking of notes, do you see a few sharps and flats scattered about, hovering right in front of notes? For instance, I see a couple of F-sharps right at the beginning, and a B-flat/D-flat pair in the second measure on the bottom line. Composers do this occasionally, sneaking in weird or cool-sounding notes to make the melody more interesting–these are called “accidentals.” Without those accidentals, this melody would be very different! What else do you see in terms of notes?

Sample #3: Over the Rainbow

Image Credit: SkyBlueMusic.com; click for larger pic in new window

Saved the hardest one for last, but this is a tune you’re still more likely to know. This is a piano adaptation of the popular tune from The Wizard of Oz, so there’s going to be some extra notes and rhythms thrown in there, but don’t let that daunt you! You can decode this just as easily as you did the others.

First of all, what is the time signature and key signature?

If you spotted those three flats right off the bat, good for you! We remember from a couple of weeks ago that to figure out a key signature full of flats, you look at the next-to-last flat in the group. In this case, what’s the next-to-last flat?

(If you said E-flat, you’re right!)

But what about the time signature? …Actually, this particular copy of sheet music does not have it printed on here. But there’s a trick to figuring it out:

• Look at the first measure–in the treble clef, there’s a half note (held for two beats, as we remember from a few weeks ago), then there’s a pair of notes played together that are both held for two more beats. Then there’s a straight vertical line, separating the first measure from the second. (Ignore the big string of eighth notes for right now. LOL)
• Two half-notes means four beats, so whatever this time signature is, it’s got 4 beats per measure. So we now know that 4 is the top number of the time signature.
• And apparently, since they only had room for two half-notes in the first measure, that must mean that the quarter note is counted as one beat–which means that the bottom number of the time signature must also be 4, representing the quarter note. So this is in 4/4 time, too, even though it doesn’t have it printed!

Whew! Well, aside from all that hullabaloo over the time signature, what else do you notice about this piece? I see lots of ornamentation, lots of embellishments on the melody added in (all the messy strings of eighth notes and big chords). This technique is something my Nannie referred to as “playing the doodly-doos” (LOL), and it serves to make the music sound richer and fuller. Looks pretty challenging to play at first, but all it would take is a little practice!

Congratulations! You Know More About Reading Music!

I hope this series has given you a greater insight on reading sheet music, and perhaps even inspired you to start playing an instrument or singing. But, of course, I could not have done all of this had it not been for my own wonderful music teachers over the years, who gave me knowledge, insight, and inspiration–I can only hope I’ve passed that same fire for music on to you. 🙂

Talking about major and minor keys, as we did last week, inevitably brings up a question: “How do you mark minor keys’ key signatures? All we covered in the key signature lesson was major keys.”

The answer: To find out any minor key’s key signature, you have to know which major key it’s related to.

Mapping Out the Keys’ Family Tree

For every major key signature, there is a minor key which uses the exact same signature, because it uses just about the same scale (set of 8 notes). The only real difference is that the minor key scale begins and ends on a different note. When we talk about these minor keys in comparison with their similar major keys, we use the term “relative minor.”

(I’m not exactly sure why the people who created modern Western music notation chose to note minor key signatures this way, but it probably saved time and brain space. Instead of having to make 12 major key signatures, then make 12 more key signatures for minor keys, they used each key signature twice, because each major key already had a minor key that was very similar to it.)

To find any major key’s relative minor, simply go down three half-steps from the major key’s beginning note (the note it’s named after). For instance, say we’re trying to find the relative minor of C major, below:

Begin on C (the note circled in red on this graphic)…

…and go down in pitch (to the left on this graphic) 3 half-steps. In this case, you’ve landed on A. This tells you that A minor is the relative minor of C major.

What Has This Got to Do with Key Signatures? A Lot, Actually

So, for instance, when you see the key signature for G major (at left), for instance, the ensuing music might not actually be in G major–it might be in the relative minor key instead. (What is the relative minor of G major? Remember, count three half-steps down from the original key (G major), and you’ll find the beginning note (or keynote) of the relative minor.) Answer: Below G is F-sharp, then F, and finally E…and E minor is the relative minor of G major. E minor is thus given the key signature of one sharp.

One Important Caveat: That Pesky “Sharped Seventh Note” Again

Remember last week when I discussed that minor key scales are created by taking the major key scale, flatting the third and sixth note, then sharping the seventh–except that the “sharped seventh” is really in the same place as it is on the major key scale? Well, that comes into play here.

When you play the relative minor key, it’ll be the exact same scale as the major key it’s related to, except that the seventh note will be sharped. That change is not reflected in the key signature at all–it’s just something you have to remember. Take the key of A minor, for instance; it’s related to C major, which has no sharps and no flats. But when you play something in A minor, the seventh note is a G-sharp, because that’s just how minor key scales are constructed.

The Complete Key Signature Family Tree: The Circle of Fifths

To remember and reference all these various major-relative minor matchups, music theorists have come up with a cool little graphic called the Circle of Fifths, seen below (this was retrieved from line6.com):

Names of major keys appear on the outer “ring” of this graphic, while their relative minor keys appear synced up with them on the inner “ring.” This really helps as a memory tool!

Next Week: A Look at REAL Sheet Music

Now that we know a good bit about the way music is notated, let’s see how to apply that knowledge to real sheet music. That challenge appears next Saturday!