- Your piano teacher Tim here and, today, I'm gonna show you the fastest
possible way to read music. I want to quickly mention that, before you can understand the technique that we're gonna be talking about today, you first have to understand two things. One, how to read notes
using the lines and spaces on staff for the treble
clef and the bass clef. You also have to know about intervals and how to use those to read notes faster. I'm gonna quickly walk you
through and catch you up, if you don't know about that stuff but, if you do know all
these basics already, skip to here in the video. I'm gonna put a time stamp for you to the technique we're
gonna talk about today. So you have to know
about how to read notes on both the treble clef and the bass clef. Now, most of the time, the
treble clef is gonna be played with your right hand, bass clef
played with your left hand. And, as you can see here, the
staff is made up of five lines and four spaces in between those lines. And, as can see, I have a note here on each of the lines right here. The lines of the treble
clef are as follows, E, G, B, D and F. You can also use a saying
to remember all of these, so you can use Every Good Boy
Deserves Fries or something, so long as the first letters
of the saying match up. The spaces of the treble
clef are as follows, they spell the word face. Now, when you're doing these
and you're figuring these out, please, please, please remember to go from the bottom of the staff
to the top of the staff. If you do it the other way, you're gonna get the
notes wrong every time. So E, G, B, D and F for the lines, F, A, C, E, spaces. All right, let's go on to the bass clef. The lines of the bass clef, pretty simple, are G, B, D, F and A, or Great Big Dogs Fight Animals. Spaces of the bass clef
are All Cows Eat Grass or A, C, E, G. You're gonna have to
become familiar with these. Spend some time on this
part of the lesson, memorizing the lines and
spaces for each clef. because now what we're gonna
talk about are intervals. An interval is the
distance between two notes, and you can use them to
read notes way faster. So, if you have a note, say that F there, and then you have another note, this is what's called a unison. These are literally the same note and, unfortunately on a
piano with only one piano, you can't even play a unison 'cause you can only hit one
key down once at a time, but just to let you know that. And then the intervals go from there onto what's called a second, meaning just that they're two notes apart. Let me show you here
with the piano in here. So you have F and G (plays
two notes consecutively), that is a second. And one thing I want to
show you about seconds, let me draw it like this, that
seconds are so close together (plays two notes consecutively) that they have to be stacked side by side. They're still like on top of one another but from left to right a little bit because otherwise they'd be
colliding with one another. One thing I want to mention
is intervals go from seconds up to what we call
octaves which are eighths, and actually beyond. But you want to become
familiar with up to an octave. All even number intervals don't match, and what I mean by this is, if one of the notes is a
space, the other one's a line. So, if I have this, I know that, and we've moved a little further
apart, notice how they move from side to side to more
of a vertical stance here. They can appear differently,
I'll show you in a minute. But this is an even number interval just identifying it by sight right away because this is a space
and this is a line. Is it now an even number interval? No, they're both lines. So, even numbers, they do not match. Odd number intervals,
however, they do match, meaning if this is a
space, this is a space. If this one's a line, this
one's gonna be a line. It doesn't matter whether
it's right here, here or even here, you know
that that's some kind of odd numbered interval. So, use that to your advantage. Seconds are really easy to identify 'cause they're right next to
each other like I mentioned. Thirds are easy to
identify 'cause it looks like the beginning of a
snowman thing, evenly stacked. And it doesn't matter
where they are on the staff or even off the staff. If it's stacked like
that, it's always a third, and that just means that these notes are (plays two notes together)
three notes away, one (plays note), two (plays note), three (plays note), just like that. Fourth, they don't match,
and you have a little bit of a space in between
here, but not too large, and you know it's not a second because they're not
(plays two notes together) smushed together, (plays two notes together)
they're a little bit further. They're four notes away, one (plays note), two (plays note), three (plays
note), four (plays note), just like that. So, memorize where all these are. Fifths are always like this,
where they're evenly stacked, but there's always an empty space or an empty line in the middle. So, if this one starts on
a line, that one's gonna be on a line 'cause it's an
odd number interval, five, and there's gonna be an empty line there. So that's how you find fifths. By the way, these are the same with treble clef and bass clef. So I'm only gonna show you on treble clef. This interval, what do you think it is? (plays two notes consecutively) well, it has to be an even
number 'cause they don't match. And it's one (plays
note), two (plays note), three (plays note), four (plays
note), five (plays note), (plays note) six notes away, right there. So that's a sixth (plays
two notes together). It's like a fourth 'cause
a fourth is here, remember, but a little bit further apart. And then sevenths, they match
but they're pretty far apart. You actually have either two lines that are empty or two
spaces that are empty, depending on where these bad boys fall. So, if it falls here, you know that that's a seventh right away. And then, like I said, you
want to learn up to an octave, which is the same (plays two
notes consecutively) note again just an octave apart, eight
notes apart, one (plays note), two (plays note), three (plays
note), four (plays note), five (plays note), six (plays note), seven (plays note), eight (plays note). And, in this case, you want
to count the note (plays note) you're starting with (plays note) and the ending note to
make sure you get there. So that's an octave right away. So, this is all the
basics you need to know to know this next part, which is the main part of this lesson. Now the reason we're here
today is to build on this. And today we're gonna
talk about the secret, which I call interval
clusters or just note clusters because they're not always intervals. And I'll explain here in a second. So say we have something
complicated like this, where you have four notes. Now you could individually read each note, be like that's an E (plays note), next one's an F (plays note), oh the next one's a B (plays note), the next one's a D (plays note). Well, especially if you're not used to reading the notes up and
down on the staff really fast, it's gonna take you way
longer than if you do this. Here's a cluster, that's
an interval, right? That's a second right there. What about these bad boys? That's clearly a third. And then what about the distance between here and that note there? Well that's gonna be, well
let's see, there's a space here, there's a line there,
that's gonna be a fourth. Now, first it's gonna
take you a bit longer, but trust me on this. When you get super good at
intervals, you're gonna know (plays notes) to be able to
read these super duper fast. So here, let me change it
back to the piano view here. Here you have (plays
notes) your bottom note E, I would read that note just by itself. You know there's a second there, a fourth (plays notes individually),
one, two, three, four, four notes away (plays notes together), and then a third (plays notes together) stacked on top of there, and it sounds absolutely dreadful 'cause it's not a real chord, just show you as an example. Clusters are also useful in reading notes that
are way up off the staff. Like, what in the world
is this note way up here? Now you could memorize your ledger lines, which I recommend you do anyway. What you can do is you
can say, okay the distance between these two is a
third, and then the distance between these two is a fifth because they match just like that. You read the bottom note, D (plays note), and then you know it's a third
above and then a fifth above, meaning (plays note)
that note up there is C. Clusters aren't just intervals. Now what I mean by that,
what I recommend you do, is really learn about your major, minor, diminished and augmented chords. Because what's gonna happen is, eventually you're gonna read that, and you could say, okay
those are stacks of thirds, and that's fine. Or you can, if you're so good at chords, you can say, okay that's an
F major chord (plays chord), and I know exactly where to play that. So, in context of a piece,
which I'll show you here in a minute as a example,
you're gonna be able to pick those out and
read those, no problem. Now, chords don't always appear like that. They can appear maybe something like this. Let me get something in here for us. They can appear something like this, where you have the bottom
note (plays note) of the chord (plays notes together) and then the top notes of
the chord just like that. They can even appear one note
at a time, called an arpeggio. So something like this
(plays individual notes), just like that. Or you can read them as thirds
going from left to right. But it is easier if you
learn how to identify, not only the intervals,
chords and then also what I'm gonna show you
right now, which are scales. Now teachers torture students
with scales all the time, but it isn't meant to be torture. It actually has a very good reason behind why we make you learn your scales. And one of the reasons is that, if you get really good at scales, you can learn to identify them by sight. It's not the only reason. There's actually a lot
of other good reasons. One has to do with being able to figure out the notes
that belong in a key. But anyway, if I see this
pattern of notes here, sure I could individually read each note, or I could determine
what the intervals are, things like that. But, if I can see it and identify it right away (plays scale), I know that's a C major scale, and if I'm used to playing
(plays scale) the scale, I also know the correct
finger pattern to use to play up and down the
key word effectively. Let me show you a couple real
examples in real sheet music. So this is a selection
from the Pathetique Sonata and, as you can see, things
are getting pretty hairy here in this first measure. What in the world is going
on with that right hand? What in the world is going on
with the left hand down here? Well, let's use our technique, shall we, to figure out what in
the world is going on. Well, first things first,
is we probably know what that top note is in the treble clef, and you probably know
that as F, hopefully. Now the question is, what
is this note right here? Well that note, think
about it for a second. They don't match, so it's an even number
interval of some type. And here's a little pro tip for you. If you have a note (plays note), one note, and then the next note
goes way up off the staff (plays two notes consecutively), 99% of the time it's an octave
(plays notes individually). You want to check to make
sure, but most of the time it's an octave, and I know it's an octave 'cause I can identify these from sight, and they also don't match, meaning that it's an even number interval. So I know (plays notes) that this is actually a
scale pattern in F minor, or maybe even in a part of an
A flat major scale pattern, coming down an octave. If you like this lesson, make sure you smash that like button. It lets other students know
this was a quality lesson that they can learn from as well. In terms of what you should
watch next on YouTube, if you felt like I went really fast through the beginning
topics today, which I did 'cause I wanted to get to
the meat of the lesson, check out this playlist here
where I have some lessons where I go through the beginner
stuff a little bit slower, how to read notes on
the staff a bit slower, how to do the intervals a bit slower.
