Lesson 8: 如何讀譜 (Reading piano scores)

The few most important things that you will need to pay attention to when playing songs/pieces are those illustrated in the following diagram:

• Clefs: Most worship songs that you will encounter will have treble clef on top and bass clef at the bottom. However, in classical music, it is not uncommon to have either all treble clefs or all bass clefs for both hands, so it is always good to check.
• Key signature: This tells you what key the song is in. The key signature is shown on all the staffs throughout the piece. The key of a song can change in the middle of it, so it is important to pay attention to such changes.
• Time signature: This tells you how many beats are there in each measure (or bar). However, this is completely unrelated to the tempo (speed) of the piece. A more extensive explanation on how to read time signature will be covered in later lessons.
• Bar lines: A bar line is drawn to separate measures. E.g. each bar has 4 beats in a given song, then a bar line will be drawn every 4 beats.

In addition to the components mentioned above, there are also other components that define the song/piece. For example,

• the tempo of the piece is typically written at the beginning of a piece, above the 1st line.
• the dynamics (relative loudness) of the piece can be written anywhere in the piece and changes as the piece goes.
• there are also a wide variation of words used in music to mark the mood in the piece.