Like an actor's script, a sheet of music instructs a musician on what to play (the pitch) and when to play it (the rhythm). Sheet music may look complicated, but once you've gotten the hang...
========== When we watch a film or a play, we know that the actors probably learned
their lines from a script, which essentially tells them
what to say and when to say it. A piece of written music
operates on exactly the same principle. In a very basic sense, it tells a performer what to play
and when to play it. Aesthetically speaking,
there's a world of difference between, say, Beethoven and Justin Bieber, but both artists have used the same building blocks
to create their music: notes. And although the end result
can sound quite complicated, the logic behind musical notes
is actually pretty straightforward. Let's take a look at the foundational
elements to music notation and how they interact
to create a work of art. Music is written on five parallel...