Understanding Tempo

As you are getting to know how to read sheet music it truly is important that you fully grasp the simplest way to determine the speed of a piece. The pace of the beat (or pulse) in the music presents the heartbeat of a musical piece. This is easy to fathom if you consider the human heartbeat - anytime we're sad or relaxed or napping then our pulse is slowed (hence if music is depicting one of these feelings it usually will use a slow speed). In the instance that one is furious, stimulated or perhaps in a combat situation then the heart beat is usually elevated (accordingly a faster speed is routinely employed).

The way to calculate the velocity of a composition in ordinary notation is easy to figure out. It is usually specified with Italian words and phrases written just above the stave. These are described as tempo markings. Here is a shortlist of the most frequent tempo markings you may find:
Adagio signifies slow

Andante means Walking Pace

Moderato denotes Quite Quickly

Allegro signifies Fast

Presto denotes Very Fast

Remembering these phrases will help you considerably when figuring out how to read sheet music.

On the other hand, in recent times the pace of a piece has more commonly been supplied with an indicator of the beats per minute. You may see a note value (eg a crotchet) then "=120bpm". This would indicate that the crotchet beat of the composition is going to be 120 beats per minute. This means that there are 120 crotchet beats in a minute. This is referred to as a metronome marking. (A similar indication may be created using a quaver, semiquaver, etc..)

Subtle modifications in tempo help you to breathe life into a piece of music. These can be shown by way of the word accelerando (accel.) for accelerating or rallentando (rall.) or ritardando (rit.) for slowing the speed. Following one of these markings, the expression "a tempo" can be written to inform the performer to go back to the original pace.

Knowing these few relatively easy expressions will benefit you when making an effort to work out the speed of a composition when you're learning how to read sheet music. If you take the time to try to commit these words and phrases to memory then you will not have to look them up every time you look at a new piece of music. For very little effort you will find that determining the tempo of a piece becomes easy.