Reading music isn't exactly like reading a book. Most banjo players don't actually know how to “read” music. One of my oldest memories about learning to play Scruggs style banjo was finding out that Earl had put out a songbook with how to play the tunes in it on the banjo. I think this was something they sold through the mail and at shows back in the early 1960's. At the time there weren't any books available to learn this stuff. I remember be really, really disappointed when I found out that the music in the book was written in music notation. Fortunately Earl put out his book not too long after that, but if you've ever seen one of these books and looked at the music you'd see that it would have been almost impossible to learn anything from it.

The lesson here is that whole tunes written in music notation are not a great idea. But you can easily learn melodies of songs in books or sheet music by just knowing which note is which and how to find those notes on the banjo. It's actually pretty easy to learn to do this. First you need to know the note positions on the lines and spaces of the music staff. Here's a little example that should get you started.

The red letters in the left column show the name of notes that the lines go through the middle of. The right column shows the names of notes in the spaces between the lines. You should notice that the first 2 notes shown are below the 5 lines of the music staff. The first note is a C. There's a little line through the note name and the note itself. This is called a ledger line. These allow us to use notes that are higher or lower than the usual 5 lines and the spaces between them. Ledger lines can be used either below or above the staff. The only problem is that if they get too far above or below the staff they become pretty hard to read.

In banjo terms the C note at the beginning of our example would be played by tuning the 4th string down 2 frets from the D we normally tune to . This means that the space above it or otherwise the space below the bottom staff is the lowest note on a banjo tuned to open G. The highest note we see is a G that's the same as either the first string at the 5th fret or the open 5th string. Most music you may want to read will usually fall in the range shown on this chart or a little higher above our high G. The note that most of our banjo music revolves around is the G found on the 2nd line from the bottom. This note, if it's not obvious already, is the same as our open 3rd string.

I need to return to the sharp symbol on the top line in this example. It indicates that we are playing in the key of G which has one sharp. If you look at the red letter on the same line we see that this note is F. When we see a sharp or sharps in the key signature it means that any note on that line is raised a half step (one fret) in the case of sharps or lowered a half step for flatted notes. The key that doesn't have any sharps or flats is C so if there any sharp or flat symbols on the top line we would play this scale using F natural. On the banjo this would be the 3rd fret on the 1st string. When we're playing in G which has this note sharped, we play it on the 4th fret instead.

I learned to read music on the banjo the way many people do. I made myself a chart of the first 5 frets of the neck on a piece of paper big enough to be easy to see with the most commonly played notes at their positions on the fingerboard. You can then also make a sheet with the 5 lines of the music staff and write the note names of the lines and spaces in really big letters. I then found some songbooks with songs I was already familiar with written in music notation. There are several good bluegrass songbooks that work very well for this since many of the songs in them are in the key of G. You then start at the first note on the music and figure out what note it is from your sheet with the line and space names. Many will start on the 2nd line from the bottom which we already know is the same G as the open 3rd string on the banjo. It shouldn't be too hard to find the the other notes of most simple melodies. You don't have be very fast at it. All you want to do is identify where the notes in the music and then figure out where the fall on the banjo. Another way is to make your own tablature using blank music paper. As you find the notes written in music notation just write them out in tab as well. Some people buy or make up flash cards with single notes written in music notation on them with their letter names. If you make your own you don't really need to use all of the notes in the beginning, just the ones used in the key of G.

The next thing we saw in the music example above was two number fours with one on top of the other. This is called a time signature and it's important to us. These can also be found in many tabs. Most music groups notes into a fixed number of beats. These are called measures. Pieces of music or tablature show measures with vertical lines running from the top line to the bottom. In our sample above we only have one measure. The top number in our time signature indicates that there are four beats per measure. The bottom number tells us that a quarter note is one beat. We call this time signature 4/4 (read four four) time. Most banjo tablature is written in it.

Occasionally you will see things written in two-four time. This just means the measure is half as long as four-four. Many dance related tunes use a rhythm that emphasizes every other beat. You can write these out using either 4/4 or 2/4 time, but the 2/4 seems a little more accurate. The other common time is three/four which is often referred to as “waltz time.” It has three notes to the measure. We count these one, two, three, one, two, three with emphasis on the first beat. Think of the song “Rank Stranger” by the Stanley Brothers or “The Tennessee Waltz ”. The last common time you may see is six/eight time. It's kind of like double 3/4 time but sounds distinctly different. 6/8 is also called “jig time” because Irish and Scottish jigs are danced to it. An example is “The Irish Washerwoman.” There are many more time signatures but few if any are used in bluegrass.