How To Read Notes (Beginner Piano Lesson)

sight-reading does not have to be as complicated as it can feel sometimes so today I'm going to be going over just a general overview of how notation works how notes on the staff work so that you can approach the site reading with some confidence so to begin we have this beautiful grand staff so that we can see how everything works together to create the notation system that we use so let's take a look what do we have here we've got lines and spaces and we've got these two symbols which you are probably pretty familiar with as they are very synonymous with music in general so up here we've got the treble clef so the treble clef is this really pretty sort of swirly design and it's also known as the G clef and there's a really good reason for that which we'll talk about in a minute then down here we've got the bass clef and it is the bass clef because it's what's played lower on the piano so the bass clef usually connects to the left hand where the treble clef is usually for the right hand now this bass clef also got like an alternate name also known as the f clef which we will talk about later as well so to begin we're gonna start with the treble clef so for now I want you to ignore this middle line and we're just going to talk about what we see from here up so we've got line one two three four and five five lines and four spaces one two three four so each of those lines and spaces has a note name attached to it and remember we talked earlier about this treble clef having a nickname G clef well that's because this line that runs through the center of the treble clefs kind of curl here is G so if you want a really easy note to identify it's this guy right here G so G is line two so when we move from a line to a space we're literally just stepping up one note name so if this is G this is important our musical alphabet runs from A to G and then repeats itself so after G we go to a after a if we move to the line note we end up on B after B we end up on C okay so notice how we're moving line space line space this is gonna really help you with your site you're eating after C you have D on the line after D we have E in the space and after in the space we have F and this can keep going but we're gonna just stick within the general staff for now so second line up is G it's the line that goes through the center of the treble clefs curl also known as the G clef for that reason and then we just go up our musical alphabet from there using every line and every space consecutively so that's really important to know now I'm going to take all these away for a second and we're gonna look at sort of the bottom part of the treble clef so this line here super important this is so if we leave G here this is gonna be like a landmark note this is another landmark note and you need to know this note like memorize it it could be the most important note because this is what its gonna put everything to do a site reading into perspective for you and how everything connects so this here is called middle C so middle C is located in the center of your piano it's the C nearest the middle and this is what it looks like when it's notated in the treble clef so middle C is super important after C we have D okay so notice how we've drawn another line here normally you're not gonna see all these lines in music but we've got them here just to make it easy but if any time you see a middle C there'll be a line drawn through it anytime you see a D above middle C it exists just below the first line of the treble clef after D we have e after E you go to the space for F and then look at we're right back on our landmark note of G so that's how this all works in terms of what the note names are now that's all fine and dandy but how do you memorize that so you can play notes really quickly I'm gonna go back to landmark notes for a moment so I want you to notice that we've got C is a landmark note we can really easily identify that so what if I my next note was here without having to think too hard how would you know so I like to think in terms of like space and skipping and stepping so if I were to step up one from C it have D but I'm moving from a line to a line and any time you move from one line to the next possible line you're skipping a note so my brain can automatically just go if that see I didn't see on the piano I'm gonna skip the next note it's gonna put me to e so you want to get really quick at sort of skipping through your alphabet in your head and thinking forward and backward that's really gonna help you with your sight reading so if I were to skip this note and put another note here I've got three line notes and I kind of call this a pattern jump up high because the notes are skipping over we've got a C skip the note I get to e skip I have to get to G that's a really quick and easy way to start sight reading without having to super like really concentrate on our eyes every single note if you can memorize this note then you can spatially acknowledge that the next note here skipping a note and then skipping a note so you can play that really easily on the piano it translates very well so a great way to get used to sight reading is by kind of skip counting and using your landmarks as sort of your grounding your a base point your starting point so if I saw this I know that's C because it's really important to memorize and then I saw this the more you practice the more you can kind of count up you go okay well that's C so this is D this is e this is F so you'll get faster at that as you go and I find that it's a really helpful way by basing my sight reading skills on the distance between the notes more so than actually going this as cdef it really really helps to put it together so my landmark notes are C and G I find that those are the easiest to locate if you have you know learned music in a band class or in school somewhere along the way to account lessons as a kid you're probably you know used to the word face in the spaces so this is F a C and E there might be an acronym for these ones every good boy deserves fudge you can absolutely rely on those but honestly I find landmarks to be way more efficient so I'd be interested to hear what your favorite approaches so let's take a look at the base clef so we can see how this all connects so a lot of times beginners will go okay well this is f so that must mean that this is F well it's not and I'll show you what so this is a and I'm going to show you how this all adds up so we've got a b c d e f G a B and look at that guys I'm gonna bro this this is middle C brings us back to middle C so everything is based on this middle C the middle C is like it's the deciding factor really is how everything connects it's why it's so important so when you see just a bass clef with a note drawn here so you just kind of see this this would indicate that you're gonna play middle C the C in the middle of your piano with your left hand now if you're just seeing the treble clef with the middle C below it you're gonna be playing middle C with your right hand so same note it just depends on how it's shown so in the bass clef using the bass clef rules this kimmy middle C below C so think about your alphabet backwards this is B below B we've got a and then everything moves down from there G and then this F is another special landmark no because the base class nickname look how this big dot goes around line one two three four that's the F no so f clef big dot goes between the two little dots brings us to F so those are some ways of looking at notes using sort of landmark so they're gonna help to make it all make sense so that's how the notation works that's how note names work and how they all connect using the Grandstaff so yes it is a lot of information to take in you can use patterns in the bass clef just like you did in the treble clef so if I place a note here memorizing that this is a you can go back to your acronyms to all cows eat grass or good boys deserve fudge always you can make up your own I'm gonna tell you right now that this is C so if you know this is C and I place a note here you're gonna skip count C skip de if I place a note here we're going from a space to a line so to the very next possible spot this is e or an F if I want to skip again skipping the space so if you jump up from F you get let not a so using intervals memorizing a few spots that kind of feel or kind of organic and intuitive to you in terms of you know everybody kind of I think gravitates to certain places on on the staff middle C for me I find that this is really easy to remember as a I find this is really easy to remember as F and this is really easy to memorize as G and then from there it's just a matter of counting up and down your alphabet using these lines and spaces as your guideposts as your landmarks to move you up and down from where you're playing so the more you practice this the easier it gets look for patterns in your music it will really really help comment below let me know how you feel about sight reading do you love sight reading or is it something that you struggle with so I hope you enjoy this lesson and we will see you around [Music]

Channel: Pianote

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Keywords: Piano Lesson, Beginner Piano Lesson, Sight Reading, Piano Sight Reading, Read Notes, How To Play Piano, Understanding Notation, how to read piano sheet music, piano lessons for beginners, how to read notes on piano, how to read sheet music, pianote

Id: gEI7uYOCQXo

Length: 9min 41sec (581 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2019