Article: the staff, the parts of a note, and the basics of notating durations of notes and rests. Make sure you understand the above, and then let's dive into the fun stuff: reading music! The C major scale is the first scale we use when teaching how to read music because it's the one that uses just natural notes (the white keys on a piano). Once you have that locked into your brain cells, the rest will follow naturally.  First, we'll show you what it looks like, then we'll show you how to make sense of it, and begin to read music! Here's what it looks like on the staff. See the "C scale" above. If you'll take a look at the first note, the low C, you'll see that it actually goes below the staff lines. When that happens, we simply add a staff line for that note only—thus, the little line through the note head. The lower the note, the more staff lines we add. But we don't need to worry about that now. The C scale is made up of eight notes. These are the equivalent of the white keys on the piano. You may or may not have a piano handy, but at this point, it's important for you to begin to get an idea of not just what music looks like, but of what it sounds like, too. " That may sound intimidating, but chances are, you already know it: it's the fancy way of saying "do, re, mi."  By learning to sing the notes that you see, you'll begin to develop the skill of sight reading—a skill that can take a lifetime to perfect, but will be useful right from the beginning. Let's take a look at that C scale again, with the solfege scale added. See the "C Scale Solfege 11" above. Chances are, you know the Rogers and Hammerstein song "Do-Re-Mi" from The Sound of Music. If you can sing the "do re mi" scale, do that now while you look at the notes. If you need a refresher course, you can hear the song on YouTube. Here's a slightly more advanced version, walking up and down the C scale using the solfège notes. See the "C Scale Solfege 1" above. Practice singing Solfege—part II a few times, until it becomes familiar. The first couple times, read very slowly so that you can look at each note as you sing it. The next couple times, substitute the "do re mi" for C, D, E. The goal is to sing the actual notes. Remember our note values from before: the high C at the end of the first line, and the low C at the end of the second line are half notes, while the rest of the notes are quarter notes. If you imagine yourself walking, again, there is a note for each step. The half notes take two steps.

What is a summary?
We now have the basics down: Learn the C scale. Learn a little sight singing—or "solfège. Congratulations, you're now reading music!