Treble, bass, alto and tenor clefs are some of the most common clef types on sheet music. Piano sheet music contains a treble clef on the top staff and a bass clef on the bottom staff. Vocal clefs, including tenor, soprano, baritone, mezzo-soprano and alto, look identical but are placed in different spaces on each staff to signify where vocalists sing each note.
There are five main note signs in sheet music. While there are several less common types, these five are used in most music. The first, a whole note, is worth four counts. It is called a whole note because it lasts for a whole measure. A whole note has no stem and looks like the letter "O".
A half note is equivalent to one half of a whole note, thus worthy of two beats. A half note looks like a lowercase "o" with a stem.
A quarter note is worth one beat, as it takes two quarter notes to equal a half note and four quarter notes to equal a whole note. A quarter note is signified on paper as a solid circle with a stem.
Eighth notes are worth one eighth of a beat. Written alone, they appear as a quarter note with a flag atop the stem. Written in conjunction with other eighth notes, their stems are attached with a solid beam.
Sixteenth notes account for one sixteenth of a beat. They appear on the page as a quarter note with two flags on the stem or attached in a group with a beam.
For each note, there is a respective rest. When a musician should refrain from playing for a certain time, a rest appears in place of a note. Rests appear as solid rectangles for whole or half notes and bear more shapely forms for quarter, eighth, sixteenth and smaller notes.
Dynamic markings indicate how loud or soft musicians should play. Some symbols are written as letter abbreviations. "P" when written as a dynamic marking on a staff stands for the Italian word, "piano," which means "soft." "F" stands for "forte," and instructs musicians to play loudly.
The crescendo symbol, which appears as an elongated greater-than (<) sign, indicates a gradual swell in volume while the decrescendo symbol, a drawn out less-than (>) sign, tells players to gradually reduce volume.
The time signature and key signature set the pace and key of a song. The time signature is written as the number of beats per measure written over top of the note value which receives the beat. For instance, a song in 4/4 time says there are four beats per measure (top number) and that the quarter note gets the beat (bottom number).
The key signature notifies musicians how many sharps or flats are in a piece. For instance, if there is an F sharp in the key signature, a musician will play F sharp each time an F appears in the staff.