Note Fish: Learn to Read Music Notes on Guitar

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Note Fish is a game designed to help guitarists to read music better. It does this by creating a strong connection between the name of the note and its location on the staff. It will help you learn music notes, which will help you to learn the guitar notes and play music better!

Notation

The Names of the notes are easy to learn. First notice the big fancy clef on the left hand side of the music. That is the treble or "g" clef. It was originally the letter "g" but it got so fancy it became its own symbol. Notice how it makes a cross hair with the line second to the bottom? Surprise that is the note "g". Once you know that you can figure any other note out. No really you can. How? Well its all alphabetical go up one spot (from a line to a space or a space to a line) or down one spot and you simply move one spot in the alphabet. So what is one lower than "g" in the alphabet? (Please tell me you are not singing the alphabet song right now.) That's right "f". And what is one higher than "g"? Wrong, it's "a". Huh? Well, that is because there is no "h" in music (except in Germany, but I digress). So instead of going to "h" it goes back to the beginning. Easy as pie.

Want an easy way to remember the names on the staff? The notes on the lines are "E G B D F" which can be remembered with the old "Every Good Boy Does Fine". The notes on the spaces are "F A C E" which spells the word face. For notes that don't fit on the staff you are out of luck, no cool tricks. Did I mention they were alphabetical, that ought to help. see below.

The Game

There is a lot going on here, so let's talk about each part: This is our hero the note fish:

You move him around the water using the arrow keys. As you do take notice of the music above you, for example the following showing the note "f":

Now as the fish swims around letters will fall into the tank. You will see "a" through "g". Your job is to eat the letter (you eat by pressing the spacebar) corresponding to the note above. If you eat the right letter you get a point if you don't you die. You are give three lives to start and when you run out game over. Every fifty points you get a free live.

Don't worry there are other ways to die too. (What fun is a game with out some enemies?)

Here they are:

The Jelly Fish

The Puffer Fish

The Electric Eel

One other character you will see in the water is the minnow who won't hurt you:

The Minnow

High Scores

Should you score a ton of points and get the high score, after the game is over you will be given the option of saving that score, at which point the whole world will see your name on the high score list or the top of the game if you got first place!

Settings

The setting page gives you options as to which notes are included in the game. Beginners should stick to level 1. More advanced players can use any combination of levels shown. The higher levels give the player more points since they are harder.

Pause

The Pause button pauses the game so you can go to the bathroom. Don't use it to look up every note or to try to prolong the game so that you score a bazillion points. Incidentally there is now a time limit of five minutes so no one has a game that lasts a month.

Enjoy!