Sheet Music Quick Reference

Notes of the treble and bass clefs:

Timing durations for notes:   Tied notes       Timing durations for rests:         Symbols:   = sharp = flat = natural

While much of the music on TabNabber is in "Piano Tab" notation, we have the technology to:
   Turn a piano tab into sheet music     - and -    Turn a guitar tab into sheet music

Sheet music is read from left to right (notes above and below each other are played simultaneously).

Sheet Music for Pianists:

A 49 key keyboard.  "Middle C" is the "c" key in the middle of the keyboard. 
More keyboard layouts.

Here's a simple example of sheet music - the scale of "f" played on two octaves:

Sight Reading Sheet Music (for pianists):

As a musician, you can read and play sheet music by mentally converting the sheet music into note names and then playing the corresponding note on your instrument.

However, advanced pianists don't need to identify all the note names as they play a piece of music.  Finding the note's key on the piano is an important first step, but this would be quite a mental task for playing advanced sheet music.  One way to read sheet music faster is to know that a note equals a specific key (so you don't even think about the name of the note).

A common technique is to use the vertical distance between notes.  Look at how far apart one note is from another and move that distance on the piano... if you work on quickly identifying intervals in sheet music and separately work on moving intervals on the piano with your hands without looking then put the two together it'll help with your sight reading.

Also see:
   How to read piano tabs     - and -     How to read guitar tabs

Comments / Corrections (8):
ray_expert [New Recruit] (3 days ago) hey boss, can we make the guitar tab to sheet music converter dowloadable? so users can feel more convenient. sunako-chan [Guest] (10 days ago) i was just wondering how is it played when it includes sharps and flats??they're confusing bizzle [Guest] (11 days ago) nice work guys! 94.64.174.48 [Guest] (13 days ago) this is really great! Bass1 [New Recruit] (16 days ago) when it said sheet music refrence i though it was goig to tell how long the notes were on the song i was looking at not stuff every musician should know. jeffgordan75 [Guest] (1 month ago) nice    sexy Sean Peters [Guest] (1 month ago) awesome! it would be nice if the animated graphic included different timings / types of notes, though. BA [Admin] (1 month ago) Hello! We have now enabled commenting on this page, let us know what you think! Comment on this article   Your Guest Name:       [Member Login]   Comments:   Unhelpful comments are exterminated.