How To Read Music 2023 🎼🎶 (Beginner Piano Lesson)

one of our most popular videos of all time is called how to read notes and this tells me that there are a lot of us out there that want to learn about reading notes and how to do it better so i thought it would be a great idea to create another video on how to read notes so we're calling this one how to read notes part two [Music] now before we dive in to all the new stuff all the new tips and tricks and even little cheats to help you read notes more efficiently and faster and actually maybe have fun while you're doing it we're going to review a couple of the main points from our previous video just as a little refresher course for those of you that might be joining us for the first time so in notation we have something called the treble clef and the treble clef it's just so pretty it's got a nice little curl and swoop and that usually means you're going to be playing with your right hand we also have a symbol called the bass clef which kind of looks like half a heart with dots or like an ear whatever you want to go with that's called the bass clef so the treble clef usually means we're going to play with our right hand and the bass clef usually means we're going to play with our left hand now the treble clef and the bass clef each live on a series of lines and spaces so there's always going to be five lines and four spaces for the trouble clef and five lines and four spaces for the bass clef and they live together on something called the grand staff which is all connected beautifully like this and it creates basically the template for all the music we're gonna play over there at the piano so one of my favorite notes and before we even get into all the other note names we're gonna talk about middle c because middle c lives outside of the lines and spaces of the treble clef and outside of the lines and spaces of the bass clef and it's a super important note because it connects the two clefs so here's what i mean when you see a note that lives on a line below the treble clef it's kind of like they're like in no man's land it's middle c so you see one line extra it's a little short short little line there's a note on it below the treble clef that's middle c that tells you to play the c in the middle part of your piano with your right hand now you might see a note above the bass clef again on its own little line kind of in no man's land again this is also middle c so when you see that you're going to play the note in the middle part of your piano with your left hand so this is c you play with your left hand middle c see it written kind of close the treble clef you play with your right hand same note now the beautiful thing about middle c is that you can take that as a starting point and simply count up your alphabet to get all the note names for all the notes in the treble clef so middle c is c you just keep going d e f g etc until you run out of lines and spaces and those are the treble clef note names you could do the same thing with the bass clef you can start on middle c and this time work backwards down from middle c c b a g f until you run out of space those are the note names it's that simple it's how it works back in the good old days when i was taking music lessons i was taught to use acronyms to figure out the note names so for the treble clef i had face face for the spaces and every good boy deserves fries for the lines and for the bass clef i had all cows eat grass-fed spaces and good boys deserve fries for the lines now that's great but it creates a misconception that somehow the treble clef and the bass clef are their own separate things and as you noticed with middle c they're not it's all one continuation continuum i'm not really sure the right word to use there but you get what i'm saying so one of the most revolutionary discoveries i have ever made about sight reading is that you don't actually have to read every single note let that sink in for a minute because i was raised to believe that i had to just see those notes on those lines and spaces and have it memorized and guess what 5 years 10 years 12 years 15 maybe even 20 years later that's not how i get through reading music i guess i cheat and when i figured out how to do that suddenly sight reading went from being awful an awful experience to being something i actually enjoy doing so i'm going to teach you how to see all those lines and spaces and all those notes on the staff and actually make sense of them quickly okay so the first thing we're going to talk about is landmark notes and this is going to be what helps you negotiate all the other notes now when i say landmark notes i'm just referring to a couple of notes that you like really memorize and make best friends with on both the treble and bass clefs because if you can do that then everything else becomes easy so we've talked about middle c already that makes a fabulous landmark note when you see that one you've gotten memorized you know what it is you know where it is you know how to play it a great landmark note for the treble clef in addition to middle c is the g line because g this is a fun fact for you the treble clef has a nickname and its nickname is the g clef and look at that sweet little curl of the treble clef it actually wraps around line two of the treble clef which is g so it's really easy to kind of memorize that the second line up from the bottom is g so lock that down i also like to use high c as my next landmark note high c lives the second space down from the top of the treble clef right there and it just it's just easy for my eyes to kind of gravitate there so when i see a note there i just know that's high c the c above middle c so if i have those things memorized it's very easy to then kind of guesstimate my way through the rest of the notes so this is where we're going to take our landmark notes information and tie it into the wonderful world of intervals so intervals is just a fancy way of saying the space from one note to the next note so you might see our best friend middle c and then you'll see a note just after it now they can be separate so you can see a c i'm going to play it middle c and then next to that you'll see a d i'm not seeing that note i'm not seeing d and going that's a c and that's a d i'm seeing it and thinking to myself that's c and the next note is just one up from c so if i see a whole sequence of notes that are moving in little steps like that from a line to a space to a line to a space to a line to a space i'm not reading them i'm reading the first note c and i'm just moving my hand up with those notes as far as they go and if they're moving backwards if they're moving down it's the same thing i just simply move my hand back down in steps i read that first note and i move my hand back down in steps that's really the long and the short of it now these notes can be kind of separate so c and then over there we've got our next guy which is just a step up which is gonna be d because i know my musical alphabet or they can be right touching each other which means you're gonna play them at the same time the next interval i wanna look at is the third now thirds are really quick and easy to identify you can tell a third right away because it always goes from a line to the next possible line or space to the next possible space so that shape always looks the same so let's say i see a note pop up on the treble clef it's on the second line that's the g line because we've memorized that as a landmark note yay and then i see another note pop up after that and it is on the line above the g i'm not reading that note i'm aware that i'm playing g and i'm aware that the next note is a third above that or a jump i call it a jump because we're just skipping you're just skipping you know we're jumping over it that's how thirds work it's amazing so if you see a line to a line or a space to a space you know what to do so for fourths let's head to the bass clef because we've got to practice there too uh we're going to build some fourths in the bass glove but first we need to select some landmark notes so middle c obviously but let's add a couple more i like to use f because you guessed it the bass clef has a nickname and it is the f clef and that's because that big circle part before you kind of go into the half heart is on the line that is the note f so we can just see the second line down from the top and b that is f i also like to use low c as the second space up from the bottom of the bass clef just quick and easy for me to see that and know what note it is so there's your landmark notes for the bass clef a fourth in the bass clef or a treble clef doesn't matter where you are the fourth simply is a little bit further apart than the third and you're gonna notice that a fourth always goes from a line to a space or a space to a line so let's build a fourth let's use low c which is the c below middle c and we know that we're not playing a third because this next note isn't on space um it's on a line and it's a little stretchier a little bigger than that third looked so we have a fourth i didn't have to read it i mean kind of cool because that f actually sits on a landmark note so i've kind of memorized it but that's how fourth sounds and looks and you can have those anywhere on the bass clef anytime you see that shape read the note that's closest to your landmark no and then build spatially on the keyboard the fourth below that now fifths fifths are my favorite cause they're actually i feel like they're pretty easy to read they're just like an expanded out third because like thirds they always move from a line to a line or space to a space but they're too far apart to be a third and so that's how you can quickly and easily identify a fifth so here are some examples of what fifths will look like on both the treble clef and the bass clef when you see these simply pick the note that jumps out at you that you've memorized as one of your landmark notes and then create that shape above or below it so a c middle c and treble clef and i see this next note here boom i've got a fifth okay so now i'm going to see um let's do g in the treble clef and then the note just past that it's quite a distance it's also a line note it's a fifth so you'll it'll be a little bit of trial and error but this is kind of how i go through it sixths that's a hard word to say and six are not terribly difficult to notice either because they're just a little bit farther apart than a fifth and we're back on our line to space or space to line concept for the sixths so if you see notes that are kind of far apart and you notice this one's a line one and this one's a space one chances are it's a sixth find the nearest landmark note use it to help you figure out the first note of your sixth and you're good to go seventh now this is where things can get kind of tricky because this is a big space and i find that the notes that are close together are really easy to figure out but when you get to these more sort of spread out distances it's a little bit more challenging and that's okay you have a few ways you can approach this you can notice that the notes are looking pretty far apart let's go from c all the way up to b so you can see that's a big distance it's a big gap so i might notice that i have a landmark note right above that b so i'll go okay well i know middle c and i'll play that one and the next note well there's my landmark c up there and this one's just one below it so you kind of work backwards using those landmarks it's all about combining your skills in a way that works really well for you an octave or an eighth it's really far apart so you can kind of use that as your as your guiding can go well those notes are quite a distance away from each other if you see an octave shown in the treble clef maybe middle c and then high c those are both landmark notes maybe you see it on e and then the e above that so i would use my middle c to help me read this e and i go okay c d e and then i would use my landmark note of c up here to go c d e you could also use your acronyms honestly every time i teach a lesson on how to read notes i'll give an idea and then the student always has the feedback to say like i used to do it this way or this i found really helpful there are so many ways you can approach reading notes and i think the most important thing i said it earlier is just allow yourself to get creative and mix and match different thinking in a way that works for you so that you're not sitting there going every good boy deserves fudge but you're able to move through this a little bit more quickly and efficiently so we've talked about intervals and how to quickly identify them and recognize them and understand how to play them we've talked about landmark notes and how landmark notes can help us to just quickly figure out certain notes without having to read every single one of them and then finally look for patterns a lot of times music will have you know oh we're just moving up in steps up and down up and down uh read the first note follow the pattern as it moves up and down and then just pay attention are the notes stepping up and stepping down are they moving in thirds and skips just negotiate based on ups and downs intervals and using those landmark notes and honestly a combination of those things you're gonna be sight reading music like a boss in no time so to put this all into practice because i can talk and talk and talk and talk till the cows come home is that this little saying that we use these days i don't know i have family that is dairy farmers the cows go out and then they come home it can take a while we can talk about this for a long time but what you really need to do to get good at sight reading is simply practice this skill so i've got a piece of music that we're going to look at we have intervals lots and lots of intervals because that's what music is made of we've got travel clef notes and we've got bass clef notes we've got notes that are separate and then we've got notes stacked on top of each other which simply means to play them at the same time so i'm going to talk you through this music so you can understand the process and then it'll be up to you to go practice your sight reading so here we go so the first thing i noticed landmark note treble clef middle c look at that there's two of them yay and then the note coming up is definitely not a jump it's a fourth so we've got an f there and then oh we've got a landmark note i know that one i memorized it second line treble clef g clef two of those and then i don't even think about it we're just stepping down a note and then oh look it we're stepping down another note and then we're moving from a line to the next line so that's a skip or a jump or a third whatever you want to call it same thing's happening again and then we're just moving down in a step in a step and then oh we're going down a third at skipping and then we're stepping that's all that's happening with my left hand i've got intervals that are played on top of each other so two notes at once uh so i'm reading landmark notes that first low note is c because i memorized it you can also use your acronyms if you want to and i see that shape and i just know it's a fifth because i've practiced this a lot but you can notice space note space note definitely bigger than a third so it's a fifth and i've got another fifth and then i'm using my landmark notes for this next one i'm immediately identifying it's the third because those notes are going from a line to the next possible line i know that bottom note is following that f clef landmark note so i'm going to play that guess this one boom i've got it and then i've got another one of those so i'm gonna leave you to figure out the rest of the music there's lots more here for you to look at but this will be really really good practice for you to practice reading your notes guessing your intervals and combine all of your skills so use those acronyms face and all cows eat grass whatever you need to as you need to but i really want to encourage you to get those landmark notes you can pick the ones that i talked about with you today or you can create your own landmarks and then use those to help you navigate memorize your interval shapes do some guessing see what happens uh so i would love to hear from you how is your sight reading journey going comment below and most of all happy practicing [Music] you

Channel: Pianote

Views: 540,974

Keywords: pianote, lisa witt, how to play piano, beginner piano lesson, easy piano, piano tutorial, beginner piano lessons, how to read notes, how to read music, reading musical notation, the grand staff, piano music, how to play piano for beginners, how to play piano for kids, how to play piano songs, easy piano lessons, piano tutorial easy, easy piano music, piano tutorial medium, piano tutorial easy slow, piano tutorial easy slow beginner, how to read sheet music, piano lessons

Id: w3QwUaJai8c

Length: 16min 25sec (985 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021