Reading Music Is Easy When You Know THIS

in this video Let's finally learn how to read music so if this is knowing how music notation works and this is actually being able to read music with relative ease most people get stuck right around here but don't worry by the end of this video you'll have tools to bridge that Gap in no time I've been reading music for over 25 years now and in the beginning this was a very difficult thing for me so over the years I've developed ways that I look at the score and I decipher this information in a way that makes this a lot easier a lot easier to remember and I want to share these with you I've gathered five of my top strategies that will make the biggest difference when it comes to reading any type of score what I won't be doing in this video is to go over all of the detailed markings and symbols in music notation if you don't know this information already go look this up first or get my book elements of music I have all of that information in there plus more regarding the fundamentals of Music Theory it's really a a goal of mine to get all of my viewers up to speed with music theory and the fundamentals so please do check that out if you haven't already number one rhythmic divisions the trick is to get fast at finding the division points in each measure let's start by looking at a score where should you look first well an initial scan of all of the different points is a good idea but from there train your eyes to look for the large beats of each measure imagine lines being drawn like so this will help you figure out the rest of the Rhythm the point is to start from the easiest point of view and then go from there you can sort of eyeball where the midpoint is for example in each measure now I want to give you an example of what this actually looks like when I'm reading through music so I have some books here that I'm not super familiar with so we're just going to flip through to find one so as I'm scanning through initially I see two four and then it switches to three eight and two four so that's something to keep in mind it looks pretty straightforward I don't see anything that is super odd but all of these rests are throwing me off and these cluster type things and so I'm going to look at what seems the easiest to read which are the eighth notes in the left hand we're not going to do Allegra ajitato [Music] thank you 3 8. and another tip if you lean in and you squint you can definitely read better just kidding [Music] foreign number two interval faces with intervals think in terms of categories the trick is to pay attention to the lines and spaces so if two notes are both on lines they are the same if they are both on Spaces they are also the same and if it's a combination of the two whether it's line and space or space in line they are different it helps to remember that the category of same lines or spaces are odd number intervals if they are different they are even number intervals once you master this you can really monkey Branch from note to note if you have a starting point you can read the notes by intervals this is particularly useful when you have a lot of Ledger lines to figure out this leap I'm going to use interval category so it goes from a space to a line so I know it's going to be an even number interval it looks like it's definitely larger than a sixth probably even more than an octave but not much more than that so I'm already ruling out different intervals and I'm going to make an educated guess and say it's a tenth of course you can sit there and go e f g a b you know but this is a lot faster and another thing that you get better at is to go backwards you can kind of look at several notes ahead of you that you're definitely familiar with so the C sharp I don't even have to think about it's a C sharp and then I see line line line so fifth above that so you use a mixture of these different Clues number three tearing a very important extension on the topic of intervals is to layer your reading and use some notes as reference notes for example here we have a g in treble clef that starts off the phrase I would separate these notes into the following two tiers instead of reading note by note keep that g in mind as a reference note then use that to help read notes that are close by such as this a here so if you just look at the top e f e and back to F you're only dealing with two different pitches you can also mind the interval here but the important thing is that you're combining different types of information absolute information meaning your knowledge of what a note is upon first glance and relative information using reference nodes and intervals if you look at the right hand the F sharp foreign it goes down a fifth and then it goes up a sixth but instead of thinking of that I am thinking F sharp I'm hanging on to that and the g is a second above that F sharp [Music] so I'm just looking at those notes in layers so that I'm not hopping from interval to interval but if I do need to look at the intervals I'm keeping track of is it line to space space to Line Line to Line and eventually you don't even have to think about this number four key signatures key signatures can be tricky because they tell you which accidentals are applied to all of the notes in that area for sharps the common trick is to look at the last sharp to the right and that will be a half step below your major key signature so in this case the last sharp is a G sharp so we are in the key of a major I like to take this one step further and just call that last sharp the leading tone of the major key signature then I play the scale in my head or actually play it on a keyboard this reinforces to you which notes have Sharps on them for Flats it's much simpler the second to last flat is the major key so in this case the second to last flat is an E flat so the key signature is E flat major again it helps to hear the scale attached to the key signature once you identify this so let's read this mazurka here key signature that last sharp is the leading tone of the major key signature this doesn't mean the key by the way just means the key signature follows that of the E major scale so it could be in C sharp minor for example we will have to figure that out so as I'm reading I'm applying the four sharps to the corresponding notes but I'm also relying a little bit on my instinct which just developed as I played the scale earlier that allowed me to keep the scale in mind which automatically contains those sharps and number five clumping what I like to call clumping is basically looking at a larger pool of notes and information than just reading note by note some common ways to Clump notes together are to recognize scales intervals and chords I want to emphasize that even if music theory knowledge is not applied it's still useful to start looking at multiple Beats at a time and to identify different points that tie the notes together let's read this mazurka here so immediately this first phrase I see as having similar notes foreign [Music] so here I'm thinking more in terms of chords even if I am not identifying what chord this exactly is I just know that this is of the same category just by noticing that the notes are similar and that's enough [Music] it also helps to look forward a little bit not too much I know some people that can read measures ahead at a time but more practically speaking if you just look within the measure and look at it as a whole rather than Note by note then you kind of know what's to come so now a quick summary of the five strategies I mentioned number one make rhythmic divisions by scoping out the major beats in each measure number two use different categories of intervals to read notes relative to one another number three divide the notes you see within a phrase into different tiers so that you can follow different lines of notes number four look at the last sharp or second to last flat in the key signature for a shortcut to your key and number five zoom out and Clump notes together to look for unifying elements within each section if this was a bit too fast for you or you want to dive deeper into these Concepts and more regarding music theory remember to check out my book elements of Music it goes way more in depth and provides tons of exercises there will be a special discount upon the release of this video and the information will be in the description thank you to my patrons on patreon and I will see you in the next video

Channel: Nahre Sol

Views: 456,338

Keywords: piano, music composition, harmony, music theory, nahre sol, classical music, improvisation, pianist, film scoring, jazz, modern music, how to read music, music reading, sight reading, music notation, music lesson

Id: WcsuofdtOy4

Length: 10min 9sec (609 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 29 2023