Notes Values Carefully, Thoughtfully, Painstakingly And
 Lovingly Placed On A Staff

So, you've decided to learn a bit about musical note values and how they are written down.

As the title states, we here at pianolessons101 suffer for our art. Actually, this video was painless and fun but we just felt a bit melancholic and tired when we wrote the title.

This video shows you what a music staff (the five horizontal lines that a composer places note on) looks like.

It will also demonstrate where middle C is and some of its possible durations in music notation format. But before you view this clip, here is a brief reminder of some of the note values that you learned during the previous lesson.

A quarter note is one beat in its duration while a half note has two, a dotted half note has three and a whole has four.

A whole note gets 4 beats	A dotted half note gets 3 beats	A half note gets 2 beats	A quarter note gets 1 beat

Another topic briefly discussed in this clip is time signature. Almost every conceivable musical work has a time signature stated in the beginning of a composition (a time signature looks like a fraction in arithmetic, but without the horizontal line dividing the top and bottom number).

Music is divided by barlines (vertical lines) into measures (small sections). Within each measure there are a certain amount of beats (stated in the top number of the time signature). Also, the type of beat in each measure (quarter note, half note…) is represented by the bottom number of the time signature. Here’s the video.   

You can also learn this stuff by assigning numbers to the notes in order to help you read them.