How to Write Musical Notes on Paper
- 1). Buy staff paper or make your own. Staff paper consists of five lines and four spaces. The lines and spaces represent particular notes. Staff paper is available at music stores, certain bookstores or you can find it online. Make your own staff paper with sheet of blank white paper and a ruler.
- 2). Practice drawing different types of notes on a blank piece of paper. Musical notes are made from lines and circles. A whole note is a simple circle. Add a straight line to the right side to make a half note. Fill in the circle with your pen to make a quarter note. Add a tail at the top of the quarter note to make an eighth note. Two eighth notes can be connected with a line from the top of one note to the other.
- 3). Practice drawing the symbols for rests. Each note has a specific duration. In 4/4 time, a whole note lasts for four beats, half notes for two beats, quarter notes for one beat, and eighth notes for half a beat. Miles Davis once said that it is the space between the notes that makes music. On a written sheet of music, the spaces are represented by rests. There is a rest that corresponds with each type of note. A whole note rest is a small downward-facing rectangle in the second space. Half note rests are small upward-facing rectangles in the second space. Quarter note rests are represented by a vertical squiggly line that goes through all of the spaces. Eighth note rests are represented by a slanted line with a dot on the left-hand side.
- 4). Practice writing out the C major scale using whole notes, half notes, quarter notes and eighth notes in 4/4 time. The C major scale is a good place to start because it doesn't have any sharps or flats. The C major scale is C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. The time signature "4/4" goes at the beginning of the staff paper. The top number represents the time value of the particular notes, in this case, the quarter note gets one beat. The bottom number represents how many beats per measure. The 4/4 time is the most commonly used time signature in popular music. Measures are separated by vertical lines that go from the top line to the bottom line. Draw a number of measure lines on the staff paper. Write out different versions of the C major scale.
- 5). Write out the primary chords for the key of C major. In addition to writing single notes, musical notation represents chords and intervals. Chords and intervals are written by stacking the notes on top of one another. Intervals are two notes, chords are three notes or more. The primary chords in the key of C are C major, ( the notes are C-E-G), D (D-F-A), E (E-G-B), F (F-A-C), G (G-B-D) and A (A-C-E).
- 6). Practice writing out melodies and songs on paper. The most difficult part of writing sheet music is the timing. It helps to write with a metronome so that you accurately represent the time value for each note. Practice with simple melodies at first before attempting more complicated ones.
