How to Read Notes Fast - The Landmark System

all right in this video I'm gonna teach you as quickly as I can how to read notes on a page so first here's a piece of music we have the title at the top the composer in the upper right hand corner and the music below all these dots with stems are notes and correspond to an exact note on the piano for example this note here is G but it's not that G or that G it's specifically this G so every note is an exact note on the piano and reading music is just reading these exact notes and playing them left to right these notes are all lined up together so you play them together as you move forward it's just like this you okay now that you understand that each of these notes corresponds to an exact note on the piano and playing notes is just playing it left to right now let's get into actually how to read these notes so notice these notes fall into two areas a top area in a bottom area each of these areas is called the staff the foundation upon which notes are drawn now notice both staffs have a different sign the top sign is called treble clef and the bottom sign is called bass clef what kind of notes does a bass player play while he or she plays low notes so the bass clef covers all the low notes on the piano the treble clef covers all the high notes now notice in each staff how many lines are there if you counted correctly you'll see that there are five lines with four spaces in between those lines notice that the notes the music either fall on a space or on a line there are notes that fall outside of the staff as well these are called ledger lines and we're gonna get into that very soon now here we have a clean staff and here the first line in the treble clef is an e however the first line in the bass clef is a G the second space from the top is a C but in the bass clef that same note is an E the lines and spaces are different in both clefts so reading music becomes a memorization challenge how music teachers have approached this challenge is by giving students mnemonics to memorize like every good boy does fine memorizing that phrase helps you memorize the five lines of treble clef are egbdf and the spaces are faced fac e the bass clef also has its own mnemonics to help you memorize the lines and spaces there as well the problem with this method is if you want to play the last line of the treble clef you have to think every good boy does fine oh it's an F that's slow and painful because you have to go through the whole acronym to get to that F it also teaches you to memorize that that line is an F but it doesn't teach you which F one thing you can get from looking at this picture is noticing a pattern notice as you go from line to space to line to space you're moving up the alphabet you're moving consecutive letters so the first line there is e right every and then you go to the space which is F you know the F and face then the next line is G then the space is a and you go up to B and the next space is say right and then line space line your F and that's the pattern of going from line to space or moving up letters now another important concept is what if we want to keep going higher well we have the final line there at F we know that you have to go line space line space so the next thing has to be a space so we draw the G at the top of the line it doesn't have a line running through it so it's a technically space and then we have the G there now what happens now that we've ran out of lines because after a space is a line so what you do is you start drawing your own lines and these are called ledger lines so the next note is going to be an A we know right after G is a and it's gonna look like this so now we have our a which is on a line and now we need a space so we draw the line and we draw the note right above it so it's a space and then we need a line again so we draw two ledger lines and we have a C and you can just continue this pattern and that's how ledger lines work so you're just drawing in the lines and it also works as you go below a staff for example in the bass clef like here so with this knowledge now of lines and spaces we can replace every good boy does fine with what I call it the landmark system instead of memorizing 18 lines and spaces in a specific order memorize just a few landmarks evenly spaced across the keyboard so our first landmark in the music is middle C right here so middle C is the C in the middle of your piano it's the fourth C from the bottom of an 88 key keyboard and the third C from the bottom on smaller sized keyboards now our next landmark is treble G C it's going to be the second line from the bottom in the treble clef so the second line from the bottom is trouble G now see how we can connect the two landmarks you have middle C then after above that you have D right line 2 space then you have the next line e and then you have space F and then look you're at G cdefg treble G is the G above middle C now our next landmark is in the bass clef this is going to be bass F right you have an F in the bass so that's gonna be here and that is the F below middle C notice what happens when we move up from bass F so we have F on a line then space is G line a space B and then line ledger line right there middle C middle C is the first ledger line above bass clef and the first ledger line below treble clef so a lot of people when talking about landmarks write out three landmarks like this middle C looks the same in bass clef and treble clef so it's just right there in the middle notice also that G and F are equally four notes away from middle C C I'm going to see here you have trouble G here and you have bass F there between C and G of three letters d e f and between F and C you also have three letters and visually you can see a sort of relationship treble G is the second line from the bottom of treble and bass F is the second line from the top of bass clef now that we've memorized these landmarks figuring out the notes around them is easy if this is G what is this note well it's right above G right so right above G is a and this note here would that be well it's right above middle C so it's D and this note here it's below F so it's e alright so now that we have these three core landmarks let's expand outward to the next landmarks so our next two landmarks are treble C and bass C notice again you're expanding equally outward so you have your treble G and your bass F now you go three letters out and you have your two C's so you have your AC and your treble C and notice that they look visually very similar too so again with the treble from the bottom up it's the third space and in the bass clef from the top bottom it's the third space and again we can just figure out notes around it so what is this note well it's above C right so it's a D what is this note it's below C so it's a B and if you wanted to go even lower what's this note well it's just two notes below C so it's an a a B C right CBA alright now let's expand out again so your next two landmarks and what we have is high G and low F and visually they look very similar to haiji is touching the top of the clef in treble clef and low F is touching the bottom of the bass clef writes the space that's touching the outsides and say we look at high G here right above high G is our first ledger line that's an A then we have the space B then we have two ledger lines C and that's our final landmark so we have high C which is two ledger lines out can you guess what low C is gonna look like well it's always gonna be like a mirror right it's always gonna be an inverse so two lines out is high see two lines out is low C so two lines below the base clef so there we have it we have our nine landmarks in treble clef the landmarks are just c's and g's and in bass clef the landmarks are all season FS visually it's easy to remember on the outsides you have high C and low C which are two ledger lines out and then you have high G and low F which are touching the stabs on the outside right Tris on the space and then within the clefts it's inverse so you have your treble C which is three lines from the bottom of treble and you have your bass C which is three lines from the top of bass and then from there you have your treble G which is two lines from the bottom and you have your bass F which is two lines from the top and then right in the middle you have your middle C which looks very similar in the treble and the bass clef and because now you know the line in space relationships you can figure out the notes around these landmarks very easily and if you memorize these nine landmarks you'll have access to all these notes if you're interested in becoming a fast Note reader I've actually already created a note reading bootcamp where I go in-depth on this method and drill you through exercise after exercise until you can read notes really fast feel free to check that out in the description below all right thanks so much for watching and I hope to see you again in another video

Channel: Musicians Inspired

Views: 5,996,389

Rating: 4.9211502 out of 5

Keywords: note reading, note recognition, sight reading, reading music, reading scores, reading pieces, music notation, the landmark system, note landmarks, beginning piano, piano for beginners, first piano lesson, beginning piano lesson, how to read music

Id: jSOU-J9KHbg

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 04 2017