CRASH COURSE IN SOLFEGGIO

MUSICAL STAFF

Notes are placed on the music staff (or stave). The staff is made up of five parallel horizontal lines (bars) to indicate particular pitches. The noteheads can be placed on, between, above and below the lines. The pitches of the lines are assigned by the clef (a symbol indicating the note location).

NOTES

RHYTHM AND NOTE VALUES

Rhythm is the interrelation between note values and their progression. Note value is the duration of a note. There are common and optional note values. Common values are fractional powers of two: whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, etc.
If eighth, sixteenth and other notes sound together, they shall be tied with a curved line. If they sound separately, they shall be written with flags. The shorter the note is, the more flags it shall have (eighth — 1 flag, sixteenth — 2 flags, thirty-second — 4 flags, etc.) 

RESTS

A rest is a symbol indicating the absence of a sound. The rests also have different values:
Mark that the whole rest shall be placed below the 4th bar, while the half rest shall be placed above the 3rd bar. It’s all the same as with the note values: the eighth rest - 1 flag, the sixteenth rest - 2 flags, the thirty-second - 3 flags, etc.

Source: T. Vakhromeeva. Guide to musical notation and solfeggio.

ALTERATION. ACCIDENTALS

Alteration is a chromatic alteration of unsteady scale degrees to increase attraction to stable ones. For alteration, special symbols are used. They usually lower or raise the note by a semitone (or a tone).
Before we move to the accidentals, we will study the tone and semitone. Semitone is the smallest musical interval in traditional and classical Western tonal music. One tone consists of 2 semitones.
These intervals are the basis of modes and scales. You can find more information on the Internet, but we will study it later.
So, there are 5 accidentals:
Sharp — raises a note by a semitone.
Flat — lowers a note by a semitone.
Double sharp — raises a note by a tone.
Double flat — lowers a note by a tone.
Natural — cancels all previous accidentals.
Let’s see how the accidentals are used in note writing. We’ll take sol of one-line octave as an example.
Letter designations of accidentals.
There are two ways of such designations: classical and jazz.
The classical notation: es(b) and is(#) is added to the note.
Example: D flat — Des, D sharp — Dis.
The jazz notation is easier: b, #, bb and x are added to the altered letter (usually jazz makes many things easier, we’ll discuss this later).
Example: G sharp — G#, G flat — Gb.

TIME SIGNATURE

Time (or meter) signature indicates the quantity of beats in a measure.
There are simple and compound time signatures and meters. Simple ones consist of 2 or 3 beats having one accent on the first beat. For example, 2/4, 2/8, 3/4, etc.
Compound time signatures consist of one or two simple ones. For example, 4/4, 6/8, etc.
Let’s look at the basic ones.
2/4.
Time signature 2/4 means that every measure shall count a summary of two quarter-notes. The first beat in the measure is strong. The second one is weak. The note values can be grouped in different ways within 2 quarter-notes.
3/4.
The first beat in the measure is strong. The second and the third ones are weak.
4/4.
The first beat in the measure is strong, third one is relatively strong. The second and the fourth ones are weak.
 The bar line is placed before the first beat. The double barline is placed between the sections of the piece. The end line is placed at the end of the piece.
Source: T. Vakhromeeva. Guide to musical notation and solfeggio.
If you want to repeat some section, you write a repeat bar line (two final lines) at the beginning and the end of the section to be repeated. The dots shall be placed between 2nd & 3rd and 3rd and 4th staff lines! 

CIRCLE OF FIFTHS

The organization of chromatic pitches as a sequence of perfect fifths (an interval between the first and the fifth scale degrees). Moving upwards, you add sharps, moving downwards — flats.
Sharps are added in the following order:
fa-do-sol-re-la-mi-si
Flats are added in the following order:
si-mi-la-re-sol-do-fa
See the more detailed solfeggio course Notes in your learning materials.