Musical notation

Music notation or musical notation is a way of writing down music so that anyone can play it. Many systems have been used in the past to write music. Today most musicians in the Western world write musical notes on a stave: five parallel lines with four spaces in between them. However, there are many others, some of which are in use today in different cultures.

Writing music down makes it possible for a composer who makes up (composes) a piece of music to let other people know how the music is supposed to sound. That music can then be played or sung by anybody who can “read music”. If music is not written down, then people can only learn other people’s music by listening to it and trying to copy it. This is how folk music was traditionally learned.