- Hi students, Tim here from
Lessons On The Web once again, and in today's video, I'm
going to show you all about how to read music, so
let's get right on into it. (ambient piano music) As I said in the intro, today
is all about reading music. Before we do that, let me
point out some things that you need to know about what's
right in front of us here. It should look familiar, most
music sheets that you read should look pretty similar to
this, where you have what's called a staff, which is
really this whole thing. This whole thing is really the staff, but the staff specifically is
really, that's actually what's called the grand staff, but
there's actually two staves, or two staffs as you could say. There's one here, and one here. The top one has this symbol
around it, or in front of it, and that's called the treble cleft. That implies for the most
part at least that you are playing up on the
high-end of the piano with your right hand, and at the bottom one, this one right here,
this is the bass cleft. You're gonna be playing that,
mostly with your left hand and (piano drowns out
speaking) notes from middle C down on the low end of the piano. Once again, treble is high
notes with your right hand. Bass cleft, for the most
part is going to be low notes with your left hand, just
so you're aware of that. At the collection of
lines, let's see here. Let me erase these really quick. There's a collection of lines and spaces. Here's a line, three, four,
there's five lines total. A note can fall on any of those lines. It can also fall between the lines, right? So you can always have
what's called the spaces. So there's lines and
spaces for both clefts. There's lines and spaces
for the treble cleft. And lines and spaces for the bass cleft. Five lines and four spaces
in between those lines. Depending on which line or
space the note falls under, tells you what note to play
and where on the piano to play that note, but we'll
get to that in just a minute. The first thing we're gonna
do is we're gonna talk about the top staff which
is with the treble cleft. What hand plays with the treble cleft? The left hand? No, it's gonna be the right
hand as I mentioned before. Remember that as the word
treble in implies, like if you have a radio and you turn
the treble all the way up, then it's gonna get
higher, you'll hear more of the higher notes, so
same kind of thing here. Treble cleft, higher
notes up on the keyboard. Here we go, as I mentioned
depending on which line or space the note falls
under tells you what note to play and where on the
piano to play that note. So here we go, so the key
to being able to read music is memorizing your lines and
your spaces for each cleft. Here we go, I'm gonna draw
a note on each of the lines and we'll see how that
goes here in a second. Click out of it there, by the
way, if you have any questions about what program I'm using to do this, it's called StaffPad. As you can see, you now have a note, on each of the lines. If it goes on a space, you
know it's a space because there's no line going
directly through the note. It's either top or below the note. But here, you know it's
on a line because it goes straight through the note, and
the lines of the treble cleft are as follows. It's E, G-B D and F. So, E-G-B-D and F, now a
lot of times, we come up with a saying that makes it
a lot easier to remember, like with each of the
first letters of the saying corresponding to these letters. So you can have, every
good boy deserves fries. So E for every, G for good,
B for boy, D for deserves and F for fries, but just
remember that no matter what saying or mnemonic device
that you come up to memorize these, that you count from the
bottom line to the top line. If you start from the top
line to the bottom line, you'll have them in reverse
and you won't hit any of your notes right, so the number
one thing to get out of this lesson is that you want
to be counting these from the bottom to the top. So E-G-B-D and F are the
lines of the treble cleft. Let me show you that last
line there, it's taken up by my pictures, sorry about that. Let me move this over here,
so there's the top line F. Now we're gonna do the
spaces, so we have a note here on the first space, second
space, third space and hey, only four spaces can fit in
between those five lines. The spaces of the treble
cleft are as follows, it's F, A-C and E, hey that spells
a word, right, face. So you really don't need
something to memorize this one because it spells a word that
we're all fairly familiar with at least if you're in
an English speaking country. The word face, F-A-C-E,
now the key to do this is where should you start counting from. Say you know in your head,
spaces are the treble cleft, it's gonna be face, F-A-C-E,
but do I start from the top and go down, like the top space is F. No, you wanna start from
the bottom space down here. Then go up from there, so
F-A-C-E, from the bottom to the top is the main thing you
should get out of this lesson. Now let's talk about the bass cleft. Okay everybody, we're gonna
talk about the bass cleft. As you noticed, there's
five lines in the bass cleft as well, let me write them in for us. Or notes on the lines rather. So you have three, line
four, and then line five. There we go, we have five
lines once again, remember, we're going from which line? The bottom to the top, remember? Bottom to top, and I think
we'll be in good shape. This time, the letters are G-B D-F and A. Remember we're going from, which line? The bottom one to the top one. Now you can come up with a
saying or mnemonic device to remember this one as well. A lot of people use, great
big dogs fight animals. Or really anything so long
it begins with those letters, and you can memorize it really well, I would stick with that. Just remember, to start
from the bottom line to the top line,
something with the spaces, which we'll talk about here, right now. Okay, time for the
spaces of the bass cleft. This time, we have four spaces once again, like we did with the other cleft. This time the letters are A-C-E and G, or the saying, all cow eat grass, or anything that matches that. Remember that when you're
coming up with a solution for these, you wanna go from which space? The bottom, remember
always from the bottom and you work your way to the
top, kinda like in business, or kinda like almost in anything, right? Makes sense. Okay, now we're gonna
poactice reading some notes. What I really recommend
you do first is re-watch the first part of this
lesson, first few minutes where I talk about the lines
and the space for each cleft just to kinda go over those in your mind. But really quick, the
lines of the treble cleft are E-G-B-D and F, and the
spaces spells a certain word. It spells face, F-A-C or E. So let me draw a note, we're
just doing the treble cleft right now, and hey there's a note, and that is on the top space. What letter must it be? Well it must be, since
the bottom space is F, the next one's A, C, and oh
hey, that note must be E. It's specifically on the piano keyboard. This E, is kinda far up there. I'm gonna show you where they
fall on the piano keyboard in a minute here. Okay so let's try another one. Let's say I move it down to this second, second line from the bottom. Which one will that be? Remember the lines of the
treble cleft are what? Pause the video, think
about it for a minute. The lines of the treble
cleft are E-G-B-D and F, and this was the second
line so it must be G, right? E-G-B-D and F, so it must be
G, and this G is right here. One thing I wanna mention
before I really get into the nitty gritty of where
these fall on the piano is that a lot of the notes
for treble cleft are from here middle C, right in
front of me, all the way up to about, the top line of that cleft actually is that F. So it's really from this E to this F, right
here, from the bottom line, right here, and the top line
is all the way up there. Okay let's try another one. What about that one? That's the third space
up, so pause the video, think about it for a minute,
re-watch the first part of the video if you need to. That third space has to
be, it spells a word. It spells face, so what's
the third letter in face? That's gonna be C, right? So that, must be C right
there, and I'll give you that C is a little bit far up, it's right there on the piano. What about this note? This note is on the bottom
line, so think about it for a second if you need to. This is going to be E on
the piano, and like I said, the bottom line is
right here on the piano, all the way up through the top space. Okay let me point
something out really quick. So if I drag this down just two more. There you go, a little
touch sensitive there. Hey, that's weird, it
doesn't fit on the staff, and it starts adding lines, notice that? How I drag it way down, it adds lines. Those are called ledger lines,
and really what they're for is for notes, 'cause the
reach for this staff is only from there to there. So what happens if you have
notes way up here or down here? Well you need what's called
ledger lines to basically extend the staff and be
able to tell where you are. The one ledger line I want you
to know about in this lesson is this one right here. See how it's on the first
ledger line by itself? That note is middle C. Right there, and every note on the cleft Is above that, this way up to here. So you have middle C down
here, and then one thing I also want to point out, is if you
move one up on the staff, let's do that, so we're going from here, we've moved up to the next
space, that's actually the space before the staff even starts. If you move one up on the
staff, you move one up on the keyboard as well. So let's move up one more. That's gonna go from D to E, right? I moved them one up on
the staff, I'm gonna move one up on the keyboard. What if I move up two on the staff? I'm going to move up two
on the keyboard as well. So that's how it works, it
does correlate to the keyboard in terms of how the distance
the notes are moving. Now we're gonna practice a
little bit with the bass cleft. We're gonna do a couple of lines first. What if I drew a line or note this line right here at the top? Remember the saying, go
back to the earlier parts of the video if you need,
but remember the saying for lines of the bass cleft are good, boys, deserve, fries,
always, or G-B-D-F-A. We're counting from the
bottom line to the top, so it's gonna be the last in that saying, and it's gonna be A for
always, or whatever saying you come up with, so that's
an A, and I'll give you a hint that that A on the
keyboard is right there, right below what we call middle C. Remember a lot of the bass
cleft notes, not all of them, most of them are from
middle C down that way. The bottom line of the
bass cleft, by the way, down here is G, is
right here on the piano. Okay what if I move it here,
it's now on a space correct? It is on the third space,
up from the bottom. Remember the spaces of the bass cleft were all cows, or A-C. What's the next letter? It's gonna be E right? Because it's all cows eat
grass, and eat starts with E. So there you go, we're
counting from the bottom to the top once again. This E by the way is right here, it's the first E below middle C. Now let me show you something. Hey I moved it above the staff. What is that thing called? It goes up above the
staff and all of a sudden, they start adding something lines. What was it called? I said it earlier in the lesson, leave it in the comments if you have it. They're called ledger
lines, and ledger lines, like I said are used to extend the staff. Once again, going way up and
way down below the staff, you have more and more ledger lines. But I want you to be familiar
with this ledger line in particular because this
ledger line that's above the bass cleft, is middle C. You may be saying, well
wait a second, I thought... That, oops, I thought
that that was middle C. That this one was middle C. How is this middle C, and this middle C? Well, they're both the same note. Right, so actually both
clefts intersect at middle C. If I go, if I take middle
C in the treble cleft, and I start going down
here, I'm actually going to start going into the bass cleft territory. Likewise, if I start from
the bass cleft right here, and I go above that, I'm
gonna start working my way into treble cleft. So that's why I said within
the range of the staff or the treble cleft, you're talking about from middle C up here. Bass cleft we're talking
about middle C down there. You can have bass cleft
notes happen up here, and vice versa, but just know
that they basically meet here at middle C, these are both
the exact same note right here. Now, if we do the thing that
I was talking about before. So let's do this, let me
move this note down one. I'll move one down on the
staff, so it must move one down on the keyboard, so
that must be B, right there. The top line of the
bass cleft is right here because we moved one down
from there, so the top line is actually two away from middle C. As you go down, you go
all the way down to there. Say from G I move up one, just one. It's gonna move up on the keyboard. So I want to move up one
here, I move up one here. What if I move up two? Gonna move up two on the keyboard. What if I move up five? I'm move up five on the keyboard. So, like I said, the movement on the staff correlates to the
movement on the keyboard. Oh glad I could help you
out Bryan, I'm really glad that you enjoyed the
part about ledger lines. Maybe I'll go into a little
more detail about that. I might do that today, but I
wasn't planning on that though. Let me see, but we can do that. We're gonna talk a little
bit more about ledger lines. Now it's up to you to memorize
where all the ledgers lines are, and you can come up with
saying about the ledger lines to help you memorize
them, but after awhile you'll just kinda get a
feeling for where they are. Here's the thing, let's
do, here's the top line of the treble cleft, which
I said was right here, right at the top of the staff. Well let's see here, what
if I move up one from there? Well I'm gonna move one up
on the keyboard as well. What if I move up another to
the first ledger line here? Let's move from G to A, and
if you notice the pitches do match so you can always
check yourself there. Let's take a look, let me move
that down a bit so we can see it a little better, sorry about that. If you can't see it, we are,
our note here is on the first ledger line above the staff,
and that is gonna be A up here. So as you move up to each ledger line... So I moved two up on the
staff, I move up two on the keyboard so you can count,
like if you had that note and you're saying, "I
don't know what that is, "but I do know the top
line of the treble cleft." You can count how far away
they are and figure them out on the keyboard like that. So here they are one,
another note would be, two, three, four, so they are five away. Do you see how one's on
a line, they skip a line, and then there's another line? That means that those are five notes away, so if I take this note and I go, one, two, three, four, five, well hey, that top ledger
line is just two ledger lines up above the staff is
C, so you can actually, if you are struggling with ledger lines, find a note that you do
know, which would be around the top or bottom of the
staff, and then count your way up or down from there. We're gonna do the same thing
going below the bass cleft. Now, going over the bass
cleft, here's the bottom line, that note is G. Now what happens if I go down to there? I've moved down two on the
staff, so I can move two down. Start with G, and then you move down two. And hey, that note is E right there. Move down two more. And you finally have C there,
and then of course you can have the spaces in
between the ledger lines. That I do want to mention. So say you just had this note right here, and you're like, "Oh
man, I have no idea what "that note is, never seen it before." So the key to getting the
ledger lines is find a note you do know and remember, so that would be the bottom line G right here. And see how it goes line,
then no line, then line there? That means those are five
away, whenever you see that, that means they're five away,
so you take G, and you go, one, two, three, four, five. Like that, then you have C and G there. So C is your bottom note on that one. Okay, so to practice
these, you want to go to MusicTheory.net/exercises/note. But if you go to MusicTheory.net
and there's like a little tab for exercises, you
click on note reading, or whatever it says, this
will take you to this page. What you want to do first,
you may not be able to see it on my screen, there's
a little icon that says customize this exercise. What you wanna do, it will
bring up a bar on the side. Again, my picture is
obscuring this for you, but you want to pick a
range that's doable for you. You wanna pick between the bottom and top notes of the staff. Again, sorry that you can't see this here. But anyways, once you set your
parameters, or your settings, you go here, and it asks
you what the note is. So here we have the bass cleft
and we're at the bottom line. Think about it for a second,
leave it in the comments if you know it. What note is this? It's going to be... G, that's the bottom
line of the bass cleft. You hit G, and it hits G,
and it says correct up there. So we're good, here's the next one. Bass cleft again, we're
up on the fourth line. What note would that be? Remember the saying is good
boys deserve, they deserve what? They deserve fries, so F for fries. Hit F, got it, perfect. Oh man, there's a ledger
line, they threw a ledger line in here 'cause I actually
did set the staff thing in the settings correct,
but it's on a ledger line. How do we figure this out? Remember the tip. First thing you wanna do
is find a note you do know which is probably the bottom
line of the bass cleft. We said earlier that that was, which one? It's gonna be G, so here's
G, and remember that if it goes from line,
and then there's a line, and then there's no note,
and then another line, that's five away, one,
two, three, four, five. So that note must be C, so let's check to see if we're correct. Got 'em, another one, all
right, let's do one more. We're gonna do bass cleft,
third line up from the bottom. That's good, boys, well
actually, great, big, and then I said dogs fight animals so that is the third letter in there. That's dogs, D for dogs, let's
hit 'em, see what happens. Got 'em again, all right,
so second space down from the bottom, bass cleft. It's gonna be, C, 'cause
remember the saying is all cow eat grass. Let's do one more,
another ledger line again, way up above the staff. How do we figure it out, what do I do? Step one, find a note you do know. That's the top line of the
bass cleft, which is A. This is five away from A,
it's the same kind of thing where you have the top
line of the bass cleft, and then you have no note,
and you see how there's that top, there's that one
ledger line above the staff that's where middle C is,
and there's another one. That's five away, you
start at A and you go, one, two, three, four,
five, and that note, I'm willing to bet, is
an E, how about that? So that's how you should
go about practicing these. I would practice these if
you're beginning at starting out note reading, I would practice
note reading for maybe 10 minutes a day for
a few months honestly. For a few months to really get
a grasp on the note reading. It's something you should
definitely practice every single day. (mellow piano music)
