Learning to read and write music should be as natural as learning to read and write the English language. Similar instructional models can be used for both. This was the premise for the investigation of 5-year-old Joel's musical development. Joel was the youngest of a four-member musical family. He was surrounded by musical literature and role models, a learning environment typically encouraged by language instructors. Joel was allowed to develop his musical ability naturally, and he learned to write music long before he learned to read music. This is in keeping with Graves' (1983) report that 90 percent of 6-year-olds believed they could write music, while only 15 percent believed they could read music. Many of Joel's first compositions were based on the black note pentatonic scale. Joel used a variety of standard and invented devices to indicate the number of events, pitch, duration, mood, register and tempo. At the end of the 8-month case study, Joel's writing ability exceeded his ability to read music notation. The intent of the case study was to understand the development and depth of one child's knowledge of music notation. (SM)