Learn to Read Music in Five Minutes... Kind of (mini episode)

Actors and singers, today you will learn to read music in five minutes! (Okay, not five minutes, and not totally learn to read music). But writer/composer David Rackoff will give you a foothold in connecting the song you're going to sing to the sheet music with all the dots and lines that you're holding in your hands. It's a place to start. If you are already an ace sight-singer, this episode is not for you! But for everyone else, whether you have a high school audition coming up, or you're a professional actor who's already been cast in a musical, I think this will help you get a little more confident and little more musical.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Nothing Like Broadway mini podcast.
I'm your host, writer, composer David Rakoff of the upcoming Off-Broadway Musical Nothing
Like Broadway.
And on today's mini podcast, I'm going to teach you how to read music in five minutes.
So obviously, there's some hyperbole in that, but I am going to try to give you a basic handle
that will help, you know, if you're an actor who has a musical theater audition coming
up or if you're like in a choir or a church choir or something and you want to have the
sort of really, really broad strokes of what will sort of help you get a foothold.
So the first concept that I just want to explain is that reading music is like learning a
language like you're not going to be fluent in five minutes, but I can teach you the equivalent
of like, yes, no, where's the bathroom?
Thank you.
Like the basics.
So that's what we're going to do today.
So I'm just going to give you some real basics so that if you were an actor who has an audition
coming up, whether you're in high school or college or professional, you can look at the
sheet music.
Presumably you've heard the song on the cast album and you can have some sense of how
the sheet music connects to the song that you're going to sing for your audition or
in the show.
And you can have a little more literacy for it during rehearsals and it's a place to
get started.
Basically, it gives you a foothold so then you can explore and learn more.
All right.
So I'm going to try and do this in five minutes.
I'm sure that's not going to happen, but we'll do our best.
All right.
So the first thing is that music has bars.
So you have like the five lines.
That's the staff.
And then you have the up and down vertical bars.
Immediately to the right of the bar is where the main beat is.
And again, this might be obvious to many people, but basically the way that I explained it
to a friend of mine recently, who doesn't read music and is not a musician at all, I
was like, the dots to the right of the up and down line is the big boom.
So again, very basic, but the dots to the right of the up and down bar is the big boom.
And so that's the first thing you can do is you can just go through and just realize,
okay, so on the sheet music, whenever I see a vertical bar, the dot that's to the right
of that and the word that's to the right of that is going to be the beat.
So even if there's more going on than that, that will at least give you some sort of grounding.
So you can try to stay with the music.
If the music director says, you know, bar 37, you know that if you're starting at the
beginning of a bar, that's the big boom.
And then if it's four, four, it's going to be one, two, three, four, big boom, two, three,
four, boom, two, three, four, right?
So that's enough to sort of help you out.
Just keep your place when you are learning a new song.
The second thing is we're going to look at the key.
So on the left side of the sheet music, there's a treble clef, which you probably know what
it is, it's a quickly curly cue thing.
And then to the right of that, there's either going to be nothing, which means the key of
C, or there'll be some sharps or some flats, which look like hashtags for sharps and lower
case Bs for flats.
So if there's three flats, the flats like the lower case B, if there's three of those,
it's always going to be in the key of E flat.
So you don't need to like figure out where they all are.
You can just look up key with three flats, E flat, or it could actually be the relative
minor, but don't worry about that for right now.
We're just learning the basics of it.
So if there's four sharps, you just look that up and you know all of a sudden that you are
in the key of E major.
And so what that gives you is that that tells you, because the name of the key was go back
to E flat, is E flat.
That means that an E flat is your home note.
And so even if you don't know anything about music, you can feel that, oh, the E flat is
the home note.
That's often where the song will start, maybe where the song will end.
And so what you're going to do is take your sheet music out and go through and just circle
every single E flat that you were singing, like in the vocal line.
So every time there's an E flat, the E flat could be at the very bottom on the bottom
line of the staff.
It could be at the top space of the staff.
Circle all of those, even like the little short notes.
Every time you have an E flat, you're going to go through and circle that in your whole
song.
Between that and knowing where the big boom is, you know, immediately after the bar,
that's enough to ground you.
Again, you're not sight-singing a song that you don't know, but if you have a song that
you've heard the album of, you're kind of familiar with it, and then you have the sheet
music and you're like, ah, this is too many dots.
It's confusing.
All of a sudden now you know that every time there's an E flat, you've circled it.
That's your home note, and then every time you see a dot to the right of the bar is the
big boom.
The next thing you want to do is notice whenever there are consecutive notes that are exactly
the same.
It's real easy.
Like there's nothing easier than if you're already on a note, stay on that note for the
next three words.
The next thing you're going to do is look for the chord symbols.
So Musical Theater almost always will have the chord symbols written above where the
vocal line is.
It's going to be like a big D, lowercase m is D minor, B, lowercase b is B flat.
And so what you want to do is go through and look at every time there's a chord symbol,
go down and whatever the first letter of that chord symbol is.
So if it's D minor, just D.
Identify if there is a D in that bar or as many bars as there are until it gives you
another chord symbol.
And this is sort of like your temporary home, and it's not always going to be that you're
singing a note that is the root note of the chord.
But if you are, it really can give you a handle on, okay, so I've got my original home note,
so E flat is our home note in this imaginary song.
And then let's say the chord that's playing now is a B flat.
If there's a B flat right above where the singer's staff is, if the letter B followed
by a flat sign is written out above the staff, then you're going to go look up what a B flat
looks like on the staff, then pick a color and highlight all of the B flats that are
in the notes that you're going to sing until there's a new chord symbol written above the
staff.
And that'll start to give you a sense of, okay, here's where I am in the song.
Here's how my voice fits into the music that is playing below me.
When I was first singing like a million, million years ago, I would sometimes try to like tune
out the piano in my brain because I'm like, okay, I know the melody.
I'm just going to sing the melody.
But it's like, no, that's the opposite.
You want to use the piano or whatever is being played to help you be in tune and have the
right note.
The next thing I would say to do is to go through and mark where you're going to be breathing.
So whenever in the song, especially if it's like a part where it's like a long time without
a breath, you've got to put a breath in there.
So rather than just trying to do it on the fly, like while you're singing it and then
you forget to breathe and then you're out of breath and then you're going to go flat,
is just go through and be like, okay, in the dispassionate, cold, hard light of day, I
really know that I'm going to need a breath before this big note.
Should I put it at the beginning of the line or should I just take a breath right before
the big note because I'm going to need it?
Put that in a put in pencil because you might change it during rehearsal.
But you definitely want to remind yourself where you need to breathe because one of
the biggest reasons that we go flat when we're singing is that we're just out of breath
and we can't support the sound that's coming out of our mouth and so it just kind of drifts
down.
The next little tip for translating your sheet music into something that makes sense for
you is when you have something called a pickup note and what that means is, so the big boom
is on the dot to the right of the bar, right?
So right before that to the left of the bar, there might be like the word the or like in
the or something that's a short note or two.
Don't try to count for that.
Like don't try to be like one eight and a two eight and a three and like, like you're
even if you're, I mean, I don't want to tell you not to do it.
You're music director, tell us you.
But often for pickup notes, it's easier just to know that the word the comes real quick
before the big boom.
So if you're just counting one, two, three, four, boom, two, three, four and the boom,
two, three, right?
Like it doesn't matter if it's exactly not in time.
If it's like an unimportant word and then you're about to get to the boom.
So don't sweat getting that exactly right.
Just make sure that you're coming in on the boom.
And so that is basically the basics of what I'm going to talk about today and just know
that it's like learning a language.
Once you have the basics down, once you know where your root note is, where your downbeat
is, you're going to start to all of a sudden feel like you have a little bit of a sense.
You've got, it's like the equivalent of speaking a little bit of a language and going to that
country.
And so now I'm just going to give you a couple of slightly more advanced things to work on
once you have this basic information down and kind of in your bones.
So the first of all, we talked about with the home note.
So if it's in the key of G, G is your home note, circle all those.
The chord of G major is G, B, D.
So then you want to basically, the B is the third.
So then you want to kind of go through the song and with a different color, notice all
the thirds.
So notice all of the B's if this song were in G.
So that all of a sudden now, even though there's, you know, a bunch of different notes, now
you at least know where the root is and where the third is because that will start to get
etched into your brain and that will give you, it's like a nightlight basically in the dark.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like when you see like a nightlight, you don't necessarily know where all the walls are,
but it's your house you've been there before.
So you know if the nightlight is there, then probably the door frame is here and the light
switch is over here.
So that's basically what you're doing is you're going to learn where the root notes are, circle
all those, then with a different color, circle all the thirds and then circle all the fifths.
And then a more advanced step, but a great one is to learn where you are in the chord.
So when you're looking at the sheet music and let's say there's an F chord is what the
chord symbol is, but your note is a B flat.
That's going to be slightly dissonant sounding.
So if you have access to a piano or a keyboard or something, you're going to play an F chord
and F, A, C, and then also play your B flat and realize, oh, okay, that's why it sounds
a little weird when I sing it.
It's because I'm singing the fourth of the chord, even though they're playing the first,
the third and the fifth, and just basically over and over again to be like, ah, with the chord
playing.
And it's going to sound a little weird.
In fact, I'll show you what that sounds like right now.
Right.
So it sounds a little crunchy, a little weird, but kind of cool.
But so once you get used to that, all of a sudden, instead of trying to either tune out
what the piano is playing or trying to like find your note in what the piano is playing,
because it's not in this instance, is you're going to see, okay, this is what it sounds
like when I'm singing the fourth of a chord and they're playing the first, the third,
and the fifth.
If there are unusual time signatures, so kind of anything other than like four, four or
three, four, just watch a YouTube video and practice clapping, especially if it's like
a real weird one, like seven, four or something.
When you have a weird time signature, it's almost impossible to like feel it until you
really go through and just, I mean, again, watch a YouTube video.
There's a million of them on any time signature you can think of, and they'll just be like
one, two, three, four, two, two, three, one, two, three, four, two, three.
Right, that's seven, four.
I love seven, four, but it is definitely one that throws actors for a loop.
But once you get it, you get it.
And then my last sort of advanced tip is learn the song that you're working on inside and out
and learn fewer songs, but learn those songs better.
You don't want to be picking a million different songs or like picking an audition song a week
before the audition.
You want to learn five to 10 songs that you know really, really well and that you can
repurpose.
I'll probably actually be doing a whole other mini podcast episode on this topic in the future.
But for now, I think that basically gives you the sort of fundamentals of getting a
foothold in reading music when you have a new song to learn.
So I'm going to take a quick look at, she used to be mine from Waitress, and we can just go
through and just look at that and just do the steps that I just said.
So first we're going to look at the sheet music for this.
I'm going to notice that it's in three, four, which is just one, two, three, one, two, three,
one, two, three, one, two, three.
And now we're going to look at the key on the left where this Quigley Q
treble clef is there is a lowercase b in the very middle line of the staff.
So there's only one flat.
I can just look up online, clicky, clicky, click one flat.
So we're in the key of f.
Technically, we could also be in the key of D minor, but don't worry about that right now.
That's for later.
If it sounds like it's really minor and you're confused, talk to a musical friend of yours.
So one flat generally means we are in the key of f.
So the first thing I'm going to do, according to my list of easy things to do,
is I'm just going to go through and anytime I see an f, I'm going to circle it or highlight it
with a special color.
And you can look up what an f looks like on the staff.
An f is the bottom space on the staff or the very top line on the staff.
This song is not going to go that high.
So it's going to be the bottom space on the staff.
Or if there are three ledger lines, which are like little small lines below the staff,
sometimes a note will be lower than what the staff can show.
And so that's the case in this song.
There's two kinds of fs.
There's the below the staff is an f or in the first space on the staff.
And that's something you can just look up.
But then you're going to go through every single time I see an f.
So the first line of the song is it's not simple to say not and sim are both fs.
Circle those.
And then most days I don't recognize me with the word with.
There's three ledger lines.
That's an f too.
So I'm going to circle that.
I'm going to go through the entire song, circle all of my fs so that you know, okay,
whenever I have an f, whether it's the low version or the medium version of it,
that is going to be something that will ground me.
And I should be able to sing that pitch correctly.
Now I'm going to look for the same note consecutively because this is again,
this is like the biggest dumb mistake that everybody makes.
So like, she's imperfect, but she's kind or whatever.
Perfect, but that and but are the same note.
Now we're going to look at the chord symbols.
So I'm going to go to it's not easy to know I'm not anything.
The chord symbol above the word anything is a C.
If I don't know what a C looks like on the staff, I'm going to look that up real quick.
And I'm going to see that the word anything, the syllable is a C.
So even though it's not the root note of the whole piece, it is the root note of the chord
that is being played while you are singing that word.
So I'm going to circle that with a different color or highlight that with a different color.
So all of a sudden now, whenever I have the root note of the chord that's being played,
I know that that's not quite as easy to find as the root note of the whole piece,
but it gives you a sense of where you want to be.
I'm going to mark breath marks with a comma.
So now I'm going to, I probably already sung this song a couple of times.
And so I know like, okay, I might run out of gas here.
Or where she holds the note for the long time toward the end that's been gone,
but used to be my and she holds that forever.
Do I want to breathe right before the word mine?
Is it easier for me to get into if I take a breath where there's a space in the music that's been
gone, but used to be mine?
Like that would probably be what I would do just because it still gives you enough breath,
but you don't have to, you're not going like she used to be.
Muh, like, you know, like that's a little less aesthetically pleasing.
But go through and even on the easy parts, the parts where you're not really thinking
that you need a breath, just write the breath in.
She is lonely most of the time.
So just put a little comma like above the staff basically as we're going to put it,
make kind of big and pencil so that you know that you always want to constantly be like
refueling your tank with air.
And then I would just go through, you know, let's say I've sung this in rehearsal or with a
voice teacher and I know that like, okay, bar 67 through 69 is the part that I'm always like,
and she's always like, you're a little bit sharp.
But I'm always like, no, I'm not, you are.
So then you're going to just basically just go through and just work on that part.
Like as much as you work on the entire rest of the song,
work on those three bars to get that down.
All right, so that was how to read music in five minutes.
I don't know how long this was, but it was definitely not five minutes.
Please follow us at Nothing Like Broadway on Instagram.
And if you have a suggestion for a topic for a mini episode or a suggestion for a song to
break down on a regular episode, please email me, nothinglikebroadwayatgmail.com.
Let's go out and listen to a little bit of Jessie Mueller singing, She Used to Be Mine.