50 Music Symbols Explained in 15 Minutes! 

here are the timestamps for lazy people like me: 0:15 - treble clef 0:39 - bass clef 0:56 - sharps 1:18 - flats 1:33 - natural 1:46 - dynamics 2:10 - crescendo and diminuendo 2:34 - metronome mark 2:57 - note lengths 3:07 - rest lengths 3:22 - key signatures 3:53 - time signatures 4:24 - staccato 4:33 - phrasing marks, ties, and slurs 5:11 - accent 5:20 - marcato 5:32 - double sharp 5:48 - double flat 6:05 - sforzando 6:23 - dotted notes 6:43 - more note divisions 7:06 - double whole note/breve 7:15 - speed markings 7:37 - spread/arpeggiated chords 7:57 - fermata/pause 8:14 - ledger lines 8:27 - octave symbols 8:56 - trill 9:10 - turn 9:40 - triplets 10:03 - acciaccatura 10:19 - appoggiatura 10:39 - duplets 10:57 - other tuplets 11:23 - fortepiano 11:37 - tenuto 11:53 - glissando 12:07 - mordent 12:28 - repeats 12:51 - alto/tenor clef 13:12 - cut/common time 13:39 - pedal markings 13:57 - down/up bows 14:21 - volta brackets/first and second time bars 14:44 - coda 15:17 - accelerando/accel 15:23 - rallentando and ritardando 15:32 - rubato 15:43 - pizzicato 15:55 - arco

This guy's content shouldn't be free! We are so blessed to have free access to this stuff in our modern world.

I've always wondered why I could never learn to read music. Now I know why.

Oh this is much much harder than I imagined.

45/50!! That symbols for string instruments got me, didn't know that they even exist.

Thank you very much! I am self-practicing piano for three months now and I saw most of the symbols presented in this video but it was helpful you explained them.

Your thoughts and efforts to bring this video is a reflection of your musical maturity. I have never come across anything closer to your video until this day. Your effort will allow any amateur musician to easily understand the music symbols. This video will also partially help all those grappling to understand music theory as part of their exams. You were mind-blowing!!! You made me subscribe to your channel. Looking forward to many more creative productions that will help music learners (also me) around the globe. Thank you so much, Matthew!

I always struggled to tell the difference between Common Time and Cut Time. Now I understand. Thank you. One thing you did not mention was double-dotted notes.

I have self-teach myself for years purely by trying to read what the symbols mean and learning how does it affect a piece by listening to a sample or transcribing a piece myself for years. This video got recommended to me and I though I can do some refreshing course with it. Though I didn't expect to reflect on myself and say that I am very grateful to somehow be able to teach myself just through the internet and with the right source.

Very nice vid ! To me an easier way to remember - treble clef: the second line (where there is the spiral) it's a G, bass clef, between the two dots it's an f, alto / tenor clef, the middle of it is a C

For the few seconds at 2:16 i recognized that Rachmaninoff song. It's so fun to play! It made me so happy.

Matthew is best piano teacher. I had many teachers, but I didn't know teachers like he.

This video will help a lot of aspiring pianists like me, great video like always matthew :)

thank you kind gentleman! making information that is difficult to obtain and digest simple

I'm so glad this was in my fyp.

you just made me travel back to 1st grade

As a pianist, I did not know: double sharp, sforzando, double whole note, octave signs (on treble/bass clefs), difference between acciaccatura and appoggiatura, alto/tenor clef, down/up bows, rubato. So 41/50. Nice vid man!

Extremely helpful! Thanks for sharing.

Amazing explanation!

Note lengths and rest lengths are dependent on the time signature. A half note is not always 2 beats. If the time is 2/2, then a half note is one beat.

You always knock out a belting video Matthew . You explain things clearly and very simply to make everyone understand too many piano youtubers just waffle on and you get lost in what they are trying to explain but not your videos .

Great for beginners! Great review for experienced musicians! Very well presented! 😊

Great. High-density information. Thanks🙏

Very good! I had 50/50. Appreciate the detailed nuances.

Perfect video i was looking for explains everything very simple with examples of how it can look.

Knew everything, but it's very very helpful, I wish I had a video like this when I was starting out. Great job!

I think I knew them all, mostly (I've played both piano and cello), but some were good refreshers of the names (marcato, breve, the differences in grace notes, tenuto, volta, and the coda). Thank you!

I am self-taught at reading notes and playing the keyboard, doing it by ear and by intuition from childhood on, never really knowing if I did things accurate or not, especially when trying to play classical pieces, but I'm not one to want to take actual lessons. I do things "my way" :D But now I am amazed at how much I turn out to have gotten right just by figuring it out for myself. Nice :)

Yet another great video! Even though I have been playing for a couple of years now and recognized most of the signs, it was still a fun vid to watch. For real though, I’ve been playing for like 5 years and have never seen a double whole note in my entire life lmao 💀💀💀

Thank you so much 👍❤

Yes basics first we have to learn so easily understand your presentation

Awesome work

Yes 50 music symbols. Well done

AAA I NEED THIS. I'm writing a ballade and I NEED to know this

I'm glad to say that I knew most of these. But there were some that I didn't know, especially the ones that are used for instruments other than the piano. Most of these I learned in High School Music Theory, but a few I learned or relearned on my own, as I would practice reading music and play pieces on the piano.

Alto and Tenor are both C clefs, the indentation in the symbol sitting on the C line in each case; like the Treble clef curls around the G line, and the serif of the vertical bar or the dots (which were originally horizontal bars) of the bass clef sitting on or surrounding the F line.

Thank you Matthew….I love this video🙏🩷

I knew 43 symbols. Thank you for the information.

The notes we hear don’t line up with the visuals showing turns and inverted turns at 9:22 don’t line up with what we’re actually hearing. What we hear is actually G-A-G-F-G, not F-G-F-E-F. The same goes for mordents at 12:19. I don’t have perfect pitch, but it threw me for a loop when I expected the semitone from F to E and heard a whole tone!

Thank you so much for the inputs. 🌟🌟🌟🙏

Favourite type of Volta in a repeat is when it has a fifth-time repeat bar :D I had *one* piece like it and it was one that my music teacher came up with himself to torture my classmates and I with

If you are a musician it’s your responsibility to understand the music you read, thanks for showing all these symbols

D.C. - Da Capo 14:51 D.S. - Dal Segno 14:57

Thanks 👍😊

Excellent 🙏🩷

In Norway we call treble clef G clef and the bass F clef. Because they are curled/dotted around their respective G and F. That's how we learn to read them.

47/50, orchestra has taught me well :)

It’s also useful to call the treble clef the G clef. And bass clef is called F clef. The reason is fairly obvious.

Thankyou for showing us that, saved me a lot of time, I'm not one for giving up but if I thought for a second I could do that, I'd be lying...

Very good, high-density info! 🙂 Trills, mordants, turns, and acciaccaturas are played as fast as you possibly can but in perfect control. Think of them as hemi-demi-semi-quavers (1/64th notes.) Most of us do these grace notes not with adjacent fingers but with one finger removed for better control. e.g., 4-2 or 5-3. Try it! You should practice trilling (especially trilling!) with every possible combination of fingers of both hands. But 4-2 with the right hand will get you started. 5-3 is hard but handy to have in your toolbox. An acciaccatura ("crush") is played as that single very short note just before the main note, so the main note comes in on time and has its full value. (That means you have to steal a tiny bit from the note or rest before.) An appoggiatura comes in on the beat and robs its indicated value from the main note. If the appog. is an eighth note (as they usually are) and the main note is a quarter note, you play it as two eighth notes. If the appog. is a eighth note and the main note is a half note, you play it as if the half note was a dotted quarter note. But the appog. is still subordinate to the melody indicated by the main note. Note that in Chopin, there are often multiple small auxiliary notes before or after a main note. Usually you interpret two or three notes as an acciaccatura (before the beat, robbed from the previous note) even though they won't have a line through them. Only a single note gets a line. A line through three notes would look messy. If there are many small auxiliary notes, you have some liberty as how to play them. They usually aren't rendered as hemi-demi-semi-quavers but more like rippling water. This (and the explanations in the video) is the usual convention for grace notes in classical and romantic music. In baroque (Bach) the symbols are usually interpreted differently and it depends on what the various editors wrote in over the decades as baroque composers didn't write any marks in at all. The pianist was expected to follow contemporary performance practice...or he could send Bach a text message (written with a quill pen) and ask him how he wanted his piece to sound.

Thank you this is so useful!

Thank You Very Very Much! Nice explanation! 🙏🙂💛

Subscribed. Thanks.

This is great resource ❤

🎉 Thank you! I knew most for the piano.

Yay! I knew most of them, except for the uniquely string stuff (clarinet player here). Some I didn't know the real name for, ie the grace notes.

time stamps wouldve been so sick bro ty

Why not write the actual note instead of double sharp or double flat

11:37 For the Tenuto you should also remember to for percussion and only percussion the tenuto means to accent the note like a marcato but instead of more than an accent, its a little bit less than an accent.

Another banger content as usual 👏

Jesus! This is more complicated than I thought :(. Very explicative video, thanks!

Great explanation. I think I have retained about a tenth of it.

Excellent Maestro 🎉🎉🎉🎉

Nice video. But I have to advocate for two symbols for organ players. In organ pedalboard notation on the bass clef a V or inverted V indicates to use the toe of the foot and the oval or indicates to use the heel. But there were several other symbols I didn't know.

This is cool!

That was great, thank you!

Very informative. Thanks

No way you took my favorite Beethoven Sonata as example

MANY, MAANNNYYY THANKS @2:07 for using the word QUIET to equate with the "pp", "p" & "mp" dynamics markings!! It's a "pet peave" of mine, but it IS more accurate to say (in music). It also corrects the concepts that people have when they say things like: "Turn the music 'UP', I can't hear it because the volume is too 'LOW'!" - - When people say things like that, I know they'll also have a hard time with PITCH being "high/low". 🎉Thank You all the same for your video!!🎉

Thank you! This was easy to learn and remember. 💕🎼🎹💕

1:38 And the natural lasts the entire bar unless a sharp/flat is after it for the same note later in the bar.

music is harder than math ... 😶😧😵‍💫🤓

Thank you for the good initiative. But...have you ever considered making 2 videos with 25 signs? I would not be surprised if anyone more than me woukd be happy.

I already understand all of this

the timing on the beat notes I never saw explained that way before, or else you were just taught differently. the 1-beat note is a quarter, because it's 1/4 of a whole note. The 2-beat note is a half note because it is half of a whole note. the one with 1 flag or bar across is an 8th note, 2 flags/2 bars a 16th note. I knew most of what you showed, but appreciated the review of the speed markings and the articulations.

#5... if there has been an F# *in the measure* and it's followed by an F with the natural symbol, then it's a normal F again. Don't need a natural once you get to a new measure, as it is implied by the key signature (although some will add it in parentheses as a courtesy reminder).

😱 This is hard, so many symbols to remember..but never encountered most of it... Thanks for sharing tho 😊

I enjoyed it.

43. DOWN/UP BOWS When playing on a pipe organ especially pedalling, down bow symbols indicate that the note is played by a heel, and up bow symbols indicate that the note is played by a toe

Terrific video! Just the facts - no embroidery! OK - you asked! I learned piano from age 14 till 16. After that, I played around a little bit, but pretty-well dropped out of music altogether. I still play the harmonica (very badly), and about 10 years ago, I was given the sheet mucic for Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D min, so I bought a cheap electronic keyboard, and learned it. It took an entire year (my sight-reading is really BAD), but I could finally play it fairly well, I thought. I'm nearly 80 now, but I remembered all the symbols that apply to the piano (you don't have to bow a piano), except two that you surprised me with. (1) A 'turn', I had remembered as being up and down a semitone, rather than a tone, and (2) the Tenuto mark, I had remembered as being half a staccato - the note played for half its length, instead of staccato, where the note is sounded and not allowed to sustain at all While learning initially, I came across triplets of course, but I never encountered quintuplets or septuplets, thank goodness! I learned Liszt Consolation No. 3, which I was proud of because it has mixed timing, but that was about as far as I got.

Thanks to ABRSM AND THE Trinity College of music London ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

Re: key signatures - they don’t actually tell you what key they’re in. So, say a key signature has F# in it. Yes, it could be G major, but it could also be E natural minor. You wouldn’t know which just from the key signature - you need to look at the notes in the song or piece of music you’re playing and whether that resolves on a G (or G major chord if it uses chords) or E (or E minor chord if it uses chords).

Alla breve also makes music 2 times faster!

I would like to know why they have those particular shapes, like the history behind the first creation of those symbols before they became standard in music sheets.

Great video idea 🙌

It’s crazy how I knew all of these and can navigate a piece a sheet music without the need to look anything up

Treble clef actually tells you where the G is, not the place of the F. It's also called an G-clef, and the bass(?) clef is also called a F-clef, due to it telling the location of F. Same logic on Alto-clef or C-clef, which locates the C.

The notes in a turn respect the key signature. In a turn or a lower mordant that is based on the tonic in a minor key, does the leading note below the tonic, which is normally sharped as an accidental, get sharped when you play the grace note? It's not part of the key signature but in the body of a minor piece the leading note will often (but not always) be sharped.

I was curious about the version of sforzando being written as sf instead of sfz when I was working on arranging certain orchestral pieces for concert band (like Dvorak symphony 7), I didn’t know they were basically the same and it was okay to alternate between them. Musescore doesn’t like to play sf as loud as it should be.

Lets go. I knew 49 out of 50

Doublet dottet means that the 1e dot half the time is than the note itself the 2e. dot the helft from the 1e dot. So the note sounds 1 3/4 time.

I am relearning piano after failing as a kid. We were taught in musical school that the treble clef starts with a sol (G), not fa (F). We drew it one line higher. Is it a common difference in the way they teach music theory in Europe and the US?

As a viola player, I got 35/50. Honestly didn't know I knew that many since I've played for only 4 years.

I play hammered all the time!

well made

50/50... dang i did not know i knew 50 of these

Good explanation. Upload more

I have no idea why I watched this(I got 46/50), but I really enjoyed it!

I knew most except the little star thing after the pedal and arco

tyty this kinda helpful