Now that we know how to play music’s most popular chord—the major triad—let’s see it in action, shall we? In our next song, we’ll focus on hitting each major chord with the left hand … while playing the melody line with the right hand. In music notation, we show this by splitting the bass staff and

By using different notes and rests, we can create all sorts of cool patterns in music. But no conversation about duration would be complete without looking at a couple of extra symbols called “dots” and “ties.” These symbols are a little less common in music. But they can be useful when you want to tweak the

So far, we’ve been looking a lot at just notes … that is, which notes to play (pitch) and how long to play them (duration). But we can’t forget about that other basic part of music—silence. You see, all the best musicians will sometimes let their music breathe. And that helps make their songs more

Now that we know how to illustrate time (or “duration”) in music, we can play anything we’d like. After all, music is really about two basic things: Pitch (that is, the 12 notes of the chromatic scale), and Duration (like whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, etc.) All we have to do is combine these

Once you see how note duration works, music becomes a cake walk. In fact, duration symbols can be rearranged into all sorts of patterns, so our options are wide open. We can mix quarter notes and half notes … or combine eighth notes with sixteenth notes … or play just whole notes … etc. The possibilities

In music, any melody is simple to learn. And that’s because a “melody” is really just a pattern of notes that sound good together—as they’re played one after another. For example, the song “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” is simply a C major scale that’s been chopped up and rearranged into a nice, little tune. This melody

It’s true … squares and circles really are everywhere. And they’re more than just the inspiration for song lyrics. Over thousands of years, these two basic shapes have worked their way into our everyday lives. Maybe it’s because they each have such a simple design. The square, with its solid corners … and the circle, with its

With all this talk about sharps … and flats … and key signatures, you might start to think there’s something special or different about the black and white notes of a keyboard. After all, music notation seems to make a big deal about which notes should be sharp, flat, or natural. But the truth is, it doesn’t

(Well, I’m assuming that’s a guy.) And this lady went for that “totally musical” look on her wrists. Do you think she knows these signs are really just Gothic letters “F” and “G”? I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t commit to this kind of tattoo. But, hey … everyone has their own style. Including this guy: Okay, so

If you’ve been alive for more than five minutes, then you know about symbols. The dictionary defines a symbol as a “letter, figure, or other sign used to represent something else.” For example, check out the following images. Do you know what each one stands for? We see these kinds of symbols all the time … on anything