Read your sheet music and look at the time signature. This tells you how fast or slow the music should be played, as well as how many beats are in each measure.
Look at each note in your sheet music and change longer notes--whole notes, dotted half notes and half notes--into shorter notes, such as quarter notes and eighth notes.
Look for any printed rests in your sheet music. A rest is a pausing point, where no notes are played. As you find rests, look at the measure and determine if the melody stops on a two-bar or a four-bar phrase.
Play your sheet music as it is printed on the page. Listen to how it sounds. Add additional notes, making single notes into chords.
Add different note combinations to your basic melody. As you do, play short eighth notes using the notes that make up a chord progression. Using a Cmaj7 chord, these notes are C, E, G and B. Shuffle these notes around and play them in different combinations.
Harmonize your song. If the piece is composed in a major key, add major chords. Change the mood of the piece with some minor chords.