Learn about music rhythm. Essentially, rhythm is a pattern of musical movement through time, formed by a series of notes that differ in duration and stress. Beat and tempo are the primary definitions of rhythm. Beat can be defined as the measurement of a musical time unit. Tempo is the speed of the recurrence of beats, for example 60 beats per minute or one beat per second. It is also possible to say that the tempo is slow or fast.
Learn about note symbols. Note symbols in music are easy to recognize (See References). Basically, a whole note looks like a doughnut. A half note looks like a doughnut with a stem, or vertical line, on its right. A half note is played two times faster than a whole note, so that two half notes equal one whole note. A quarter note, played four times faster than the whole note and two times faster than a half note, looks like a half note, but the doughnut is filled. An eighth note has the appearance of a quarter note, but with a flag on the stem. A sixteenth note has a two flags on the stem. Musicians play it sixteen times faster than the whole note.
Learn the notes and how they are represented in sheet music. There are seven basic note names. They include A, B, C, D, E, F and G. Each note corresponds to its own pitch, or the frequency of the note, which can also be measured in hertz (symbol Hz). All notes can be represented in a written form on a master staff --- a set of horizontal lines and intermediate spaces that represent a sequence of pitches.
Learn about sharp and flat notes. If a certain note is sharp, it means that you need to raise its pitch by half the frequency between this note and the next note. For example, if you need to play C# (pronounced "C sharp"), then play a pitch half-way between C and D. A flat note (symbol b) is a note half the pitch lower than the original pitch. For example, Db is played as a a pitch half-way between C and D. Db and C# have the same pitch. There are five sharp notes --- C#, D#, F#, G# and A# --- and five flat ones --- Db, Eb, Gb, Ab and Bb.