Episode: 3792
Title: HPR3792: Learning to read music, part one
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3792/hpr3792.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 05:24:40

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,792 for Tuesday the 14th of February 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Learning to Read Music Part 1.
It is hosted by Ennis Tello and is about 23 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, in which we learn to read music by going for a walk.
Hi, this is Ennis Tello on Hacker Public Radio.
If you want to record a podcast of your own, get yourself broadcast out on the network,
head over to the Hacker Public Radio website, maybe go through the list of subjects that
there's some demand for, and record something.
One of those subjects on the Hacker Public Radio website for which there's some demand
is music theory.
Now it's quite a difficult subject tackle, so what I thought I'd do was teach anyone
who doesn't know how to read music in the space of one podcast, well, kind of, nearly.
Back in the day, when I was buttered a slip of a lad, I spent, I think it must have been
ten years or so, teaching music.
And my claim to fame, if I ever had one, was that I would be able to teach anyone how
to read music in half an hour.
Now there was obviously a good degree of hyperbole about that claim, and there still is.
And it's a whole lot more challenging, of course, to teach anyone to read music in half
an hour on a podcast because it's entirely an audio medium.
So I am going to cheat.
There are show notes which you can get for this podcast, and it's quite a good idea to
have those show notes in front of you.
It's not absolutely necessary, I'll do my best to describe what's going on on the
printed page.
Having it in front of you in some form or another, either on a piece paper, print out,
or on a tablet's really good, and you need to take that with you.
Take it with you.
I hear you cry.
Where are we going?
Well, we're actually going on a walk.
You need to go outside, you need to find a street or a path.
And where you can walk without any hindrance, without bumping into people, or weaving round
things, or coming to a crossing point, you need a fairly unencumbered stretch of walk.
It needs to be fairly flat because you need to keep the rhythm of your steps going in
a fairly regular manner.
And the reason why that's important is because as humans, we spend a lot of time walking,
and that actually sets up a really nice pulse or rhythm, which of course is one of the
building blocks of music.
There are largely two building blocks of music, pulse or rhythm, and pitch.
Today, we're going to be largely talking about rhythm, which is, in my opinion, by far
the most important aspect of any piece of music.
And I'll come to why that might be maybe at the end of this episode if there's time
or certainly in a later episode if there isn't.
So we're out there now, we're walking, we've got our piece of paper in front of us, and
we're just going to start walking along, and we're going to count to four as we go.
One, two, three, four, left, right, left, right.
I'm sorry if the speed at which I've set this up is either too quick or too slow for
you, obviously, take your own speed, take your own time, but count to four as you go along.
One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
Now the reason why I'm saying four is because it's really a very common timing in music,
a lot of music can be divided into fours really easily, and in fact, in musical terminology
we call it common time, or often denoted with a C. If you look at your handout, what
you'll see is on the first line of music, which is the stave, which is five parallel lines,
very close together, that stretch across the page.
At the beginning of that, there's a thing called a clef.
The clef actually is related very much to pitch and the pitch of the notes that you'll
hear.
So we're kind of going to ignore it for now, so at the beginning of every line of music,
there are various different shapes.
The one that's on your handout is called a treble clef, or sometimes the G clef, and
it's actually a curly letter G at the beginning of each line.
That's followed by C, and of course C stands for common time, four.
So what we're doing here is dividing all our music into measures, or bars, and each bar
or measure has four things in it.
In this case, four paces, one, two, three, four, left, right, left, right, okay.
So online one, we've got four dots in each measure, as you can see, and to make them
more legible, there's a little line coming from each black dot in the, I've just picked
the top gap of this particular stave and just put a dot in there, and each dot has a
line coming down from it, so it makes it easier to see.
And so we are going to count off now, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one,
two, three, four, one, two, three, four, okay.
So let's hear that now, as a snippet of the Will's dullest music coming up.
And now, as we go along, what I'd like you to do is just clap your hands or click your
fingers if you're in a public place and don't want to appear like a complete lunatic.
It's just clap on every footstep.
So we're going to go one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, simple, isn't it?
Okay.
Just keeping that rhythm going and I'm going to try and keep the rhythm going here as
well so that you guys don't fall over as you're trying to stay in step with what I'm saying.
What we're going to do is we're going to clap in between each footstep and on each footstep
and we're going to use the word and to pace ourselves.
So we're going to go four, one and two and three and four and one and two and three and
four and one and three and four and one and two and three and four and okay.
Now, if you look at your hand out, which is in your page in front of you, hopefully,
you what you've got now is eight notes in each measure or bar and in fact, we call them
eighth notes or quavers in some cases.
And what you've just clapped out is that rhythm, one and two and three and four and one
and two and three and four and just to refresh our memory, not that we need it refreshing.
Let's go back and just do each step with a clap.
So one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, okay, should we go back to the ends?
One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and now if you look
at your hand out, you can see that on lines two and three, we've got essentially what's
exactly the same thing, but there is some difference in the way that the music is represented.
Online two, we've got eighth notes or quavers written out individually and that's for those
of you who haven't got the hand out, that's a black dot in the top line of the stave and
then a line coming off it and then a little tail on it and that says it's not a quarter
note, it's an eighth note, it's got a tail.
In line three, what we've done is we've done exactly the same thing, there are eight notes
in each measure or qua and we've paired them together or actually put them into blocks
of four and connected them with a thick black line and this is just a legibility exercise.
So you can group your eighth notes or quavers in groups of two or four, you can use them
with tails or mix and match them.
If you look at the last bar for instance of line three of the hand out, you've got a
quaver with a tail and then three join together and then two with tails and two join together,
doesn't really make any difference.
The rhythm that we're clapping or playing is exactly the same, line two and line three,
go like three, four, one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four
and it's all exactly the same.
Now if we go back, we can remind ourselves of quarter notes or crutches.
So one, two, three, four, it's quite easy and then the quavers or the eighth notes
are one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and simple really.
Now we can mix and match those.
In line four of our hand out, I've got a, let's have a look, we've got a crutch it on
the first beat or quarter note and then two quavers followed by two more quavers, followed
by another crutch it.
So in Imperial, if you like that is a quarter note, four eighth notes and a quarter note.
So let's beat that out, it's very simple, one, two and three and four, one, two and three
and four, one, two and three and four, one, two and three and four and there's variations
on that of course, as long as you keep your walking going, you never lose that pulse
and of course if you did lose that pulse, you'd fall over and look pretty daft.
So let's keep that walking going and tap out some more rhythms just using simple crutches
and quavers or quarter notes and eighth notes.
Line five, we've got one, two three and four, one and two, three and four, one and two,
Three and four, one and two, three and four.
Line six, three, four, one, two and three.
Four and one, two and three.
Four and one, two and three.
Four and one, two and three.
Four and simple, isn't it?
Line seven, I've gone back just to get you back
into those quarter notes or crotchets again, just to remind you,
keeping that pulse going.
We go one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
Now, let's imagine you're a woodwind player,
so you're playing flute, clarinet, something like that,
trumpet, even brass player.
If you play constantly, you're gonna fall over
and asphyxiate because you never take a breath,
and in fact, taking a breath or resting
is a very important part of music,
and we use a squiggle, or various types of squiggles,
in each place in music where a rest takes place.
If you look at line eight, I'll try and describe it to you.
There are two quarter notes followed by a thick black squiggle,
and then another quarter note in a bar or measure.
So in fact, now what we have is, if I count you in,
three, four, we have one, two, rest.
Four, one, two, three, four.
One, two, rest, four, one, two, three, four.
So you can either whisper the number
that you're missing or say the word rest,
and we can really mix and match those.
In fact, what I'm gonna do now is,
I'm gonna throw a couple of things at you.
I'm gonna change from four beats in a bar to three beats in a bar,
so keep walking, but now we're gonna count in three,
so we're gonna go one, two, three, one, two, three, one.
Two, three, one, two, three.
Okay, so keeping that going, three time,
or three, four times, as it's sometimes called,
is also wallstime, and in fact,
any of you who've cut some rug on the dance floor,
will probably have an old style dancing, obviously.
But the wallstime is three beats in a bar,
it's very familiar, I think, to all of us really,
if you think about the blue, denube,
and all the famous walls, so, one, two, three.
One, two, three, and of course, you can keep playing out,
or clapping out your eighth notes or quavers,
so you would be going one, two, and three, and one,
and two, and three, and that kind of thing.
So I'm gonna keep the pulse going in the background,
as I'm keeping chatting with you,
and we're just gonna do three in a bar.
If you look at line nine, what I've got is two rests,
and two quavers, and then three crotchets,
or three quarter notes, and then a new type of note,
which is, if you like, a kind of hollow black note
with its tail going down, and essentially,
this is a note that lasts for two beats,
and probably the best way to approach this one
is just to do it three or four times.
Okay, so I'm gonna count you in three beats,
one, two, three, rest, rest, three, and one, two,
three, one, two, three, and one, two, three, and one two,
one, two, three, again, one, two, three, and one,
two, three, one, two, three, and one, two, three,
and one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two,
three, one, two, three.
One, two, three.
So I've thrown a couple of things out here.
First of all, we're now doing three beats in a bar.
And we're using rests.
We're mixing up quarter notes and eighth notes,
or crotchets and quivers.
And we've also got this new note, which is a hollow one,
which actually lasts two beats.
And obviously clapping that is going to be really difficult.
In fact, it's more or less identical
when we clap this new note, which is called a half note,
or a minim.
And it's going to be undistinguishable
from a single note followed by a rest,
because obviously claps only last a tiny point in time.
And this note lasts for two beats.
So just going through nine again.
This is line nine in the handout.
I'll count you in.
One, two, three.
So it's one, two, three and one, two, three, one, two, three,
one, two, three and one, two, three, one, two, three.
Okay, let's take a pause here.
You can draw breath, come to a halt.
And let's just have a quick chat
about these two elements of music
that I mentioned to you a while ago.
The first one is pitch.
And the second one is rhythm.
Of these two, it's my opinion that rhythm
is the most important.
And in fact, if you get someone
who shares a musical heritage with you,
in that you share popular tunes,
and if you tap out the rhythm of a tune
that you were both know, the chances are
that person will be able to guess it.
However, if you sing or play a popular tune
but mess the rhythm up,
then there will be unlikely to be able to discern
what that tune is.
I guarantee you, and in fact,
what I'm gonna do now is play you
a well-known tune,
and I wonder if you can guess what it is.
And now I'm gonna tap out the rhythm of that tune
And now I'm gonna tap out the rhythm of that tune
and see if you can work out what it is.
Not wildly difficult.
Let's talk about the notation of that.
And for this, we're gonna have to start walking again.
1, 2, 3, maybe a bit quick, let's slow down a bit. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, ok so let's
keep that going. I've got a new mnemonic for you, mnemonic being memory aid, so far
we've used a number and the word AND. Now we're going to do in the Annie Hall style, we're
going to do Lardy Dars. Can't you remember 3? 1, 2, 3, La Dida, la Dida, la Dida, la Dida,
simple, ok. A la Dida, if you look at line 10 of your handout, a la Dida is a dotted
quaver followed by a semi quaver or in Imperial a dotted eighth notes followed by a sixteenth
note gathered together and connected with a thick bar. But La Dida is a much nicer way
of looking at it and a la Dida is actually spread over two beats or steps. La D falls
on one step and Da falls on the next step. So for instance in our handout, in line 10,
we have if we count 1, 2, 3 remember we're counting 3 in each measure or bar at the moment,
so if we go 1, 2, la Dida, 2, 3, 1, 2, la Dida, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, ok so you can see where
we're going with this onto this well known tune. I'll count it out again for you and perhaps
you can sing along and put your shoulders back, express your musical genius unto a grateful
world. Let's go 1, 2, la Dida, 2, 3, 1, 2, la Dida, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. You can come to a nice
halt here, get your breath back, all that clapping, bit of singing, bit of patriotism maybe.
What we're going to do now is bring into our handout our first mention ever of pitch
and you can see it's really very simple. The lower down on the stave, remember the stave is those
five, that grouping of five lines, the lower down on the stave, a dot or hollow dot is the lower
the note and the higher up the stave, the higher the note, it's simple so therefore you can
easily read the rhythm here and you can kind of follow the pitch as we go along if you look at
line 11, you can hear, stand up everybody.
Ok that's about all from me today, it's technically certainly less than half an hour I think to
get to this point I've got 20 odd minutes I think on my timer here. We haven't quite learnt to
read music but certainly we've learnt to read some of the most important aspect of music
in my opinion which is rhythm and we've also begun to explore pitch, we can now make sense of
things like rests, we can see what looks furiously complicated which is the dotted eighth note,
followed by the 16th note dotted, quaver followed by semi-quaver which is a lardida or a lardida
of the lardida, we've seen rests, we've seen quavers or eighth notes, the notes with little tails,
we've seen those eighth notes or quavers barred together with the thick black line and we've also
seen minims or half notes which are two beats or steps long and those are the hollow ones with
no tail and just a line and we've also seen a couple of things as well, you've probably stopped
seeing as it were now, let's just go back and cover those, we've seen the C for common time
at the beginning of each line or at the beginning of a piece of music and we've also seen the
remember that's to do with pitch and that's the very first thing on each line, the one I've
used in the handout is a G-cliff or a treble clef, what else oh yeah we've seen the final measure
of a piece of music on each line we've got a single bar ending or measure ending followed by a
thick black line, so there's all sorts of information in there and actually you've picked up
and the way that you did it was by walking and without getting too philosophical about it,
of course walking is very much a primal thing that humans do and we have this inherent,
this innate sense of rhythm and pulse and it comes from walking and in fact there are
a whole cultures out there which are based on the nomadic lifestyle, the aborigines of Australia
for instance consider walking and travelling across the land to be a holy act as of itself
and if you're into exploring that kind of thing I would recommend Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines
as a really good read and his exposition of the theory that in fact the natural state of a
human being is to be nomadic is to be walking and it's so integral to the way that we think the
way that we move that music and rhythm in music becomes a whole lot easier if you base it on this
idea of pulse of steps of walking just keeping it going and of course the whole thing is that as
you read music you can't stop you can't pause because if you do you'll fall over if you see what
I mean if you translate music into walking anyway that's enough for now in a later episode
we'll consider pitch in music maybe bring in some more complex rhythms triplets are good fun
there palais by the way you know we'll come to all that if you've enjoyed this podcast or maybe
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