Q&A for How to Write Sheet Music

Yes, doing so allows you to notice parts you might want to change. It will also help you remember your tune as you continue writing.

Think of each note in the chord as it's own voice, and know that each voice has to go somewhere. That way, the chords stay interesting. Think of the C major triad (CEG). The tonic voice can stay C, but you can change the other two notes to make maybe a sus4 chord (CFG) or a 7th chord (CGB). Have a general idea of where you want your notes to go, and put chords between that sound nice.

Yes, 8va means play it one octave higher when the music is at the top of the staff (I'm going to assume we're in treble here). It's only there so that no one has to read a ton of ledger lines. However, when the music goes too low, it can also mean raise it up an octave (usually used in bass clef). So - yes and yes.

The time signature is the two numbers you find after the key signature. It tells you how many beats there are in the measure (bottom number) and which note gets the beat (top number). Just in case you don't know, a quarter note (or crotchet, if you are a Brit) is one beat, a half note (minim) is two beats, a dotted half note (dotted minim) is 3 beats, and a whole note (semibreve) is four beats. For instance, if the time signature is 4/4, then there are 4 beats in the measure, and a whole note gets the beat. This is the general idea of it, but as you progress in the musical world, you will learn time signatures such as 5/4, 2/4, 2/2, 6/8, and 9/8.

Sheet music paper is a lot better, but if you only have notebook paper, you can use that. You'll just have to draw the scale on it yourself.

Sort of. You might be interested in using a MIDI controller, which is a keyboard that connects to a computer, and can help with things like that.

My advice to you would be to go to certain websites such as MuseScore where you can chat with others who are writing music or have done so in the past. Some additional research should turn up other similar websites too.

-ou can add the appropriate ledger lines per note (which are used for any notes above or below the staff); there are many examples of this in notated music. You can notate them an octave lower and add "8va" with a dashed line to indicate which notes are transposed (moved) up the octave. Things to be careful about: Make sure the notes you're writing are in the instrument's range! Computers can play notes that people can't, so if you want a real human to play the notes, find someone who plays the instrument and ask them, or check an orchestration book (Alfred Pocket Instrumentation is a great resource). Sometimes players prefer ledger lines to 8va notation; ask about this too.

Bars are just the vertical lines you see periodically across the staff that group the notes into beats, so yes, you can draw your own bars.

Yes you can if you really want to, however the article recommends printing out the paper or buying it from a musical supply shop since both of those options tend to be easier than trying to draw out all the staves yourself neatly on a blank page.

You would write 8vb from where you start playing an octave lower, and draw a dotted line under the entire part you want played in the lower octave.