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Understanding the Musical Alphabet

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Part of the video series: How to Read Sheet Music

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Summary: The musical alphabet includes the notes A, B, C, D, E, F and G, and is the same for all instruments. Learn how to understand the musical alphabet in this free music theory video lesson.

Views: 4,145 | Tags: bass, key, sheet, signatures, notes, treble, staff, sharps, flats, musiclessons, music theory

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About the Expert
Contact: ericwilliamsmusic.com

Eric Williams Eric Williams of “Eric Williams and the Cruisers” lives in Sedona Az. His band is successful throughout Arizona. He also teaches guitar, voice and other in... read more

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by spicey

I was desperate in learning to read music. I can play several instruments but, I have never been taught how to read music on paper. thank you for assisting me in my hour of need. I do not feel so inadequate in front of my friends anymore. Now, I am off to put my music on paper for my friends to play. thank you. trying to learn quick. embarrassed in NH

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Video Transcript

Understanding the Musical Alphabet

On behalf of Expert Village, I'm Eric Williams and I am here to tell you about how to read music. To ready music, you need to know the musical alphabet. The musical alphabet is illustrated up here. The musical alphabet goes a, b, c, d, e, f, g and then starts over again on a and goes a, b,c, d, e, f, g. Starts over again a, b, c, d, e, f, g. So there is really 7 letters that you have to memorize. And it goes a, b, c, d, e, f, g. The reason I illustrated it with the piano keyboard of black and white keys because that is a very easy way to get familiar with the musical alphabet. All musical instruments whether they be trumpet, saxophone, guitar, or bass, they all use the same musical alphabet but just aren't as easily visible as on a piano keyboard because this is a way to look at it where you can't make any mistakes. Once you understand that different pitches have different alphabet letter names that go with them, that is the beginning stage and that leads us into reading notes on the staff which will be in our next segment. So remember a, b, c, d, e, f, g, which are the letter names that go with the pitches of music. The musical alphabet played on a piano in real life so you can hear it sounds like this. Here's the letter a and those were the musical alphabet. We had a, b, c, d, e, f, g, a and it actually works backwards too. You can go a, g, f, e, d, c, b, a. So as you notice as you go up the musical alphabet a, b, c, the pitch gets higher and higher a, b, c, d, e, f, g, a. If you go backwards on a musical alphabet the pitches go downward and get lower in pitch a, g, f, e, d, c, b, a. The musical alphabet.

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