another [reading music] question

F

Fat Steve

so the top 3 lines (f, e, d) of the staff have sharp signs. do i play all f, e, and d notes sharp, or only the ones that sit within those staff lines?
 
Fat Steve said:
so the top 3 lines (f, e, d) of the staff have sharp signs. do i play all f, e, and d notes sharp, or only the ones that sit within those staff lines?
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I think I understand what you're saying. If F is marked sharp, you play all Fs sharp. Is that what you were needing?
 
That sounds like you're looking at the key signature, 3 sharps is the key of A. The sharps aren't on the top 3 lines- they're C, F and G. If you know the A scale, those notes are sharp. So every time you see one of those three notes they are played sharp, just like in the scale. (unless you see a natural before it).
 
The way I was taught to read notation, and I think I mentioned it somewhere on the forums, makes it very easy.

Find the root notes of the key on the staff. And just apply that to your scale and number the scale degrees. There are only 7 notes in a scale, the root note being 1. You can write the scale degrees under the notation to get started.

If you have some notation you can paste I can show you what I mean.
 
In other words (if you don't know your scales), yes. If F, C, and G are marked sharp at the beginning of the piece, ALL instances of F, C, and G will be sharp unless marked otherwise, including the lower octaves. It's not restrictive to just the one line.
 
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