The musical score

A musical score is like a recipe of how to play a particular song. It shows the musician what notes to play and when to play them. Below is an example of a simple musical score for the nursery rhyme ‘Hot Cross Buns’ which I will explain in detail below. Note I have only included part of the nursery rhyme to keep this explanation as simple as possible.

The Staff

The staff consists of five equally spaced horizontal lines and four spaces in between.

Musical notes are added to the staff to create a visual representation of the song to help musicians play the music accurately.

Imagine the musical staff like a ladder for musical notes. The higher you climb the ladder (going up the lines and spaces), the higher the sound of the note. So, a note on the top rung of the ladder will sound much squeakier than one on the bottom rung!

The Treble Clef

At the start of the staff there is a symbol called a clef that indicates which notes are represented by the lines and spaces on the staff. The Treble Clef is the name of the clef that is used by instruments such as the tin whistle that have a higher range of pitches.

When a muscian sees there is a Treble Clef they will know the name of the note that sits on each line or within each space of the staff.

The notes

When a Treble Clef is present the notes for the 5 lines and 4 spaces are as follows.

To help remember the notes for each of the lines from bottom to top, the phrase Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge can be used.

See if you can work out what each of the notes in this section of Hot cross buns are.