How to Read Sheet Music Beginner to Advanced (NEW 2023)

by the time you get to the end of our seven level strategy you're gonna be able to read music a lot faster but first we gotta start at level one which is mnemonics so for the lines of the treble clef from the bottom to the top I remember is Every Good Boy Deserves fries and the spaces of the treble clef spell face moving on to the bass clef I use the saying good boys deserve fries always as my lines and my spaces from the bottom of the top are all cows eat grass your piano teacher Tim here and moving on to level two which is landmarks landmarks is all about picking certain notes that you can identify from site that you can use as a point of reference or as a landmark the first Landmark I like to identify is C mainly because well first of all it's one of the first notes you learn and it's also easy to identify on the staff not just the staff but you want to identify them on the keyboard as well so here is Middle C on a ledger line on its own and it's going to be right there in the middle and then the C above that is right here and the whole point of memorizing where these are from site is that if you have like a few notes Here For example say you have these four quarter notes because you know see is that third space up you automatically know that that has to be d That's e that's B that's C because you're using that c as a reference point you just got to be careful with the bass clef because the lines and spaces are different so if you use the same Landmark on the sheet music for bass clef just keep in mind that these are ease now instead of c and specifically this bottom e is two e's down for middle C right there and this e is right here and once again you use them as a point of reference even you know like with The Ledger lines you'll know that that note has to be D because it's right below E another landmark I like to use is f mainly because it's the bottom space and the top line at least for treble clef and the bottom f is right here the that top f is right here memorize where they both are on the staff and the uh music of course or the staff and the piano and then you just got to be careful with the bass clef that if you use the same one the bottom space in the top line that these are now A's being here on the bottom and here on the top respectively before we move on to level three I just want to point out that you can practice your note reading by getting a set of flash cards on Amazon or you can do this by going to musictheory.net clicking on exercises and going to note identification just make sure you click the little gear at the top select the notes that you actually know so if you're not very good at Ledger lines you know reduce them to the staff there and I would do about 50 of these every time you practice this one is a G level one was mnemonics level two is landmarking and level three is The Ledger line trick so once you master the first two things I talked about you want to be aware of this one simple fact that's going to make your life easier here it is the spaces of a staff are equal to the lines going up off the staff and going below the stuff so what I mean by that is that if this spells face f-a-c-e then this is also face f-a-c-e just an octave above and you can use this Ledger line trick to figure out the Ledger lines really quick gee that one's an e now I also said it's equal to the lines going below the stuff starting from that bottom line but you got to be really really careful with this because now because we're going below the staff it we're going in backwards order so if this is f a c e from bottom to the top this is also f a c e so just careful though we're going to be going down e c a f is that three Ledger lines below there so there's The Ledger line trick there's more to it though and that works for the bass clef too by the way but the lines and spaces are different let me show you the second part of the rule so the spaces on the staff are equal to the lines off the staff the lines of the staff are equal to the spaces off the staff starting from the top space so this is e g b d f this is e g b d f and guess what if we take these down starting from the top or sorry the bottom space going down egbdf but it's the opposite so it's F du e b g e and I mentioned before the same applies for the bass clef just careful that we're using different notes a c e g for all cows eat grass a c e g level four skipping strategy when you start from middle C and Skip every other note every other white key up the piano and name them so we'll do this together so c e g b d f a c e g b d f a c did you notice anything well you should have noticed a repeated pattern c e g b d f a c e g b d f a c e g b d f a c e g b d f a now there's a purpose to this let me show you what it is so here we have the lines of the treble clef starting actually from that c I was talking about earlier when we were talking about the landmark in that middle C down there and then we're gonna say the names of the notes that are on the line we know that is every good boys deserves fries or e g b d f and then we have a up here now let's say them in order c e g b d f a where did we hear that before we just played it on the piano didn't we and you can use that to read music a lot faster allow me to explain so as you can see when we were skipping on the piano it was equaling to skipping on the staff going up Line to Line to Line to Line or even space to space to space and that pattern is going to serve you well so let me draw a line question what is that insanely high note well if you know where middle C is that's the beginning of our sequence c e g b d f a c e g so we figured out that super high note just by using that sequence of notes you can use that starting on any of the notes by the way so if you you're starting on the bottom line e your start you're doing the same sequence just starting on E so it'd be e g b d e f a c e g b d f a c so get used to saying that forwards and backwards because you might have a note on a ledger line way below the stuff so now we have to count the thing backwards so right we're going to start from um let's start from C still so we know where that c is so here's C right there then we gotta skip down that's that one there's that one and therefore this note must be D foreign and of course I'm going to want to remember that because I might not always have the piano in front of me to count backwards so let's see if I can do it without the piano this is what I want how good I want you to be so forwards first c e g b d f a c e g b d f a now backwards c a f d b g e c a f d b e g right hopefully question what is this note we're gonna do a bass clef example before we move on way way down in there so we're gonna use our sequencing technique level four here to figure out what notes what note this is so the first thing I want to do is I want to tell you where or what note this is we talked about that note earlier on that first uh Ledger line below the staff remember we talked about it during the landmarking that is an e so we're starting from e in the sequence right so we're doing e then we're counting down this way to figure out what it is but I'm not going to use the piano I'm going to try to use my own brain all right so this first Ledger line is e let's see if I can figure out where this final note is so this is e this is C that's a that's F and this is a d again so our bottom note is in fact a d I did check it and it's all the way down there so as you can see the skipping strategy can help you get those notes a lot faster but I actually have more techniques for you the next one just Builds on that which is so level five is interval reading and we've actually talked about a certain interval when we were doing our skipping technique and that interval is a third by the way the interval is the distance between two notes so it's a third because between c and e is one two three between e and G is one two three that's how you do it you just count the note you start on and the notes in between and then the ending notes now you can actually read music a lot faster by building on that and being able to recognize other intervals so here they are this right here is a second between G and a specifically and they are so close together that they actually have to like kind of lay on top of one another so you know a second no matter where it is on the staff just by looking at that's one simple thing and one thing I want to point out is a second is an even number right two four six eight and I want to tell you this one little trick all even number intervals don't match now what do I mean by that well if the bottom notes align the other one's going to be a space if the bottom notes of space the other one's going to be a line so they do not match so 2 4 or sorry that's that's four there we go they don't match six and octave don't match so remember even doesn't match so seconds right next to each other like I said a fourth is just a little bit more a part of that you can tell right away that there's a little bit more of a gap in between there and they don't match so that tells you it's not a third or a fifth right so always use that little thing to your advantage and now a six is a little bit further than that you can tell that there's a little bit more of a gap here but what am I going to say next they don't match so you know it's an even number and then an octave an octave will span almost almost the entire staff you might expect an octave to match but no it's an even number so they don't match so that's the seconds fourth six and octaves that's how you identify those let's talk about odd number intervals real quick so here is what a third looks like it looks like the beginning of a Snowman and you notice something about it the num the notes match so space and space so three a fifth right away they match and there's an even space between them seven is a little higher up so that would be like the bottom space in top space but not quite the whole thing and that uh you have two even spaces in between and there's our octave so remember they don't match and then lastly this is one you don't have to know as much but this is a ninth which is an octave plus one and they match how about that quiz time what interval is this now it starts on a line but do they match yes they do you got a B here and F here with an even line in the middle I would say that that's a fifth let's just practice a couple more and then we'll move on what about this one what interval is this the first question you should ask yourself do they match and they don't match right you have space on the bottom line on the top they look pretty far apart almost the entire staff so I would say that that's an octave and sure enough got F down here and F up here that's an octave there's a little bit more to intervals but at first I would just start out trying to identify the number from site like what is this one we actually did this one already it's a third but one thing I want to tell you there's a secret here and that is with seconds thirds six and sevenths so seconds thirds Sixth and sevenths remember that they have a minor version of each of them so if so from F to G which would look like this is what we call a major second that's like the beginning of a major scale and they have to be a whole tone away from each other just meaning that two half steps basically now what if I lower this note a half step it's still a second right one two but now we only have a half step between each one and we call that a minor second so a second if it's a whole step above or a whole tone that's major that's minor let's go back to that major third that we had a second ago so like I said seconds thirds Sixth and sevenths a third can also be altered by lowering that top note and we call that a minor third which would look like this on the staff question what interval is this do they match no they don't match so therefore it's an even number interval and I would say that that's definitely a sixth and what did I tell you about six just a minute ago there is a minor version of that just by lowering that top note so there is a minor six a minor seventh would be that so just be careful that there's different versions of them but I first I would just focus on identifying the number interval that's going to help you the most reading music now if you're asking the right questions you're saying Tim you mentions you mentioned mentions you mentioned seconds thirds right six and sevenths but what about fourths and fifths well let's take a look so here we have a fourth that would be from C to F and remember that when we were changing the intervals before to their minor versions We were lowering that top note by a half step so if we have from C to F and that's a fourth what if I lower it a half step that's actually a major third so there really is no minor force in most cases uh just be aware of that so that's why I said seconds thirds and what else did I say six and sevenths have minor versions fifth is another case let me show you so if you have a fifth and you lower the top note oh hey you can have a minor fifth right except they don't call it that they call it a tritone and the reason is that the difference between this note in this note is three whole tones so remember that a half tone is moving up every note like that and a whole tone is every other note like that so therefore if you have C you move up a whole tone you move up another whole tone and you move up a third whole tone that is when you get your tritone which would look like that you may say Tim how do I practice my intervals well go to musictheory.net once again click on exercise and there is an interval identification right there I recommend doing about 50 of them a day and I would start with intervals that you know about by clicking on this little gear up top it's time for level six and then there's actually a level after that this one is Advanced pattern recognition which is what I told you about in the intro so once you start looking at things like intervals and you know using our mnemonics and all these things together to read notes what I want you to do is start to Iden identify patterns in your music that you recognize and you're gonna have to learn some music theory to do this but some things you want to be on the lookout for are scales arpeggios Cadence patterns base patterns such as the Alberti base ornamentations such as trills and of course chords by being able to identify all these things from site you're going to be able to look at at notes in advanced groupings instead of individual notes that's really what this has all been about if you think about it first we started with individuals with their mnemonics that we built into skipping in thirds intervals and then we're branching out into all these Theory Concepts so you're like 10 how do I learn all of these different things that I just talked about that you need to be on the lookout for well you can pick up a music theory book this is a great supplementary book it doesn't really have any lessons to it I mean they'll introduce you to some topics and then have you do some worksheets on that but if you want something with a little more instruction you can check out my website pianolessontheweb.com a lot of courses on playing piano and Theory over there code YouTube 15 off but let's get on to number seven originally this was only going to be a level six strategy but I added in a seventh level after some thinking because sight reading is actually where you want to go once you've learned how to look at all these patterns and stuff you want to be developing your sight reading here's some really quick sight reading tips ideally you should be sight reading through something that is a little bit below your current playing level so if you're currently playing stuff that looks I don't know like this you shouldn't be playing anything with that has more ink on the page than that or has has any kind of chords or key signatures that you're not already familiar with the whole goal of sight reading is being able to play from the beginning of an example to the end of an example with relatively few mistakes and picking an easier example is the way to go tip number two is you want to take a minute or two to analyze the piece before you begin playing it's going to give you a lot better chances of success playing through it again you're going to want to be on the lookout of all the things I talked about chords different patterns like what the key signature is time signature all that stuff and then the third quick tip I have for sight reading is to sight read every day the more you do it the better you'll get at it and you get better at sight reading by picking up this sight reading series I have a course over on my website of course piano lessons on the web but this course this series of books is really good because it starts at level one super duper easy stuff this is called improve your sight reading this is by Paul Harris you can definitely find these on Amazon I have one final tip for you at the end but I have a quick question for the comments do you want me to make a whole lesson in depth on just sight reading the last thing that we talked about I really could go over a lot more examples and give you more tips on that so let me know if you want that in the comments I always love to hear back from you guys uh you know hearing back from your ideas really helps me make the channel a whole lot better and I always just like to hear from you but here is the final tip for today and it's the most important tip and that is to watch this next lesson right here so if you wanted to catch up on how to read music which was this lesson and you need to work on your rhythm you need to watch this one right here it's the common Rhythm patterns you need to know and if you watch that one already check out this one I'm sure it'll be just as good your bi teacher Tim here and I'll see you next time [Music] disappeared I just say I'm busy

Channel: Piano Lessons On The Web

Views: 7,869

Keywords: how to read music, read music faster, piano lessons on the web, piano lesson, how to play piano, piano, ledger lines, exercise for beginners, read music fast, fast, tutorial, sheet music, how to read sheet music, how to read notes, how to read notes fast, how to read music for piano, how to read music notes, read music much faster, intervals, major, minor, music theory, learn piano, note reading

Id: tAh2XhAY9BA

Length: 20min 41sec (1241 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023