The Fastest Way to Learn to Read Music (The Guide Note Method)

In this video I am going to teach you how to

read

music

al

note

s as quickly as possible so here we have an arrangement of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake if we look at the basics the little spots are called

note

s and each note refers to a specific key in the piano or keyboard, for example, the first note here is a D but it's not this D, it's not this D or this, it's this specific D on the piano, so all these notes tell you to place certain keys on the piano note can be filled with gaps, have stems with dots next to them, or can be joined together with beams.

These are different ways to indicate how long notes should be played. I'll quickly play this piece of

music

so you can hear how it sounds. So the first thing you'll notice is that the notes are played from left to right, like when you

read

Western languages. When you reach the end of one line, you go to the beginning of the next. You may also notice that there are two. groups of five lines and four spaces with these symbols at the beginning, the group of lines is called a staff or stave in the United States and some other parts of the world and most of the time you play the notes on the top staff with your right hand and the notes at the bottom with the left hand, this symbol is called the treble clef which covers the notes of the higher keys and this is the bass clef which covers the notes of the lower keys, we will see them again a little later . where I will also show you a really useful tip for recognizing certain notes.

I want to show you something that will hopefully immediately clarify how these lines and spaces relate to the piano keys if we remove everything and leave these. lines, also known as staves and then rotate them, each line is now aligned with its associated piano key, as I mentioned before, each note tells you which specific key to press, so these lines and these spaces in between are the

method

used to record the notes. and so it makes sense that if there is a note on this line here, then you would play this key, there is a note on this line here, you would play this key here so you can play all the notes on the lines like this and As you can see, there are also keys aligned with the spaces, so if you played the notes between these spaces it would cover these keys and to play the notes between or outside the staves, you could simply write on a timeline as well.

It is known as a ledger line like this overseas, so as you can see, these lines refer to the center keys of the piano, except instead of the lines being vertical, they are horizontal along the page, so as the notes move higher on the page, you move further. right on the piano as you can see there are a lot of notes to remember and one factor that makes it even more complicated is that the notes are different in the treble clef and bass clef, for example the bottom line here in the treble clef. is an e while the bottom line in the bass clef is a g and this note here is a d but in the bass clef it is an f traditionally music teachers use phrases or mnemonics to try to help students remember the names of the notes, for example for these lines a common one is Every good boy deserves football, then take the first letter of each word to tell you the name of the note and also face these spaces between some other examples that are good boys to do with apples for these lines in the bass clef and all cows eat grass for these spaces here the problem with this approach is that people often confuse them and forget which phrase applies to which group of lines or spaces or you just forget them all together, they're also slow because, for example, First I have to read Every Good Boy Deserves to find out that this note is an F.

Not ideal when you're trying to remember a note quickly while playing a melody. Also, these phrases tell you the name of the note, but they don't tell you what specific key you need to play on the piano, for example, Every Good Boy Deserves, so you can know that a note in this line is a D, but it doesn't. tells you which D you need to play, there are seven Ds on a full size piano. I'm going to quickly show you a much more effective

method

that uses a visual approach instead of an ineffective word-based memory test.

This method uses

guide

notes, so you only need to memorize 10 notes first. To find middle C on your piano, you can locate it by looking for the group of two black keys in the center of your piano or keyboard and then there is the right key on the left, so here it is here on my piano, think of this as your anchor put both thumbs on it and place the rest of your fingers on the white keys without skipping any so your little fingers will land on the G here and the F here now remember before I mentioned a tip that has to do with treble and bass. key, if you notice that the swirl of this treble clef looks like a G and there is a line that goes directly through the center of that G shape, the notes on this line are G and specifically the G above the middle C where your finger landed pinky on your right hand. starting from the anchor point in order to remember this treble line, for the moment we will refer to the treble clef as treble clef and now the treble clef symbol, if we use our imagination and connect the dots, it looks like a little bit to a The F notes on the line that runs between these two points are F and specifically the F to the left of the middle C again where your pinky finger landed on the left hand from the starting position the anchor to help remember this let's a refer to the bass clef as bass clef.

Once you can identify these two notes, you can easily find the neighboring notes, for example, if there is a note in the space above this G line, here you can go up one step to the right on the piano, so it is an A or if it's below one step to the left, so it's an F or you can skip the line below your G line, so this is your G line, skip the space, so just skip the white key, so which is an e and You can do the same thing with line F here, so if you're above, just go up one step to the G or if you're below line F, one step down or again if it's a jump, jump Line a Line, skip the target. key there, so that's an A and so on now, if we work from the middle of the staves, G is the second line from the middle and F is the second line down from the middle, so they're symmetrical.

Now let's connect these notes to middle C on the scar if we move one step at a time without skipping any keys, your thumb will land on middle C in your right hand look at this g f e d c Can you see how the middle C is on its own line? This is one of those temporary ones. The lines I mentioned are called ledger lines, so middle C is on the ledger line below the treble clef and if we do the same from the left hand F, your thumb lands on another ledger line G a b c, so that's middle C in the left hand bass clef. notice that it looks different, but it's the same key on the piano right at middle C and middle C on the left hand.

Remember I mentioned that notes are written differently on each staff, so middle C is written on the first line of the ledger below the treble clef and the first line of the ledger above the bass clef both.

guide

notes are separated by a fifth equal distance one two three four five and one two three four five let's add the next two guide notes if we go from the middle again the third space in the treble clef up and the third space down in The F Clef, they're both C, this is the C up right from the middle C, so the middle C and then this C here and this is the C down left from the middle C, so the middle C down . to the left again, both are equal distances on the piano, four notes up from the G line in the G key, so g a b c and four notes down from the F line in The F Clef f e c c let's add the next two guide notes on the top line of the The treble clef is an f and specifically a fourth from the last leading note, so one two three four or C D E F, so this F here and then we have the final line on The F Clef again, a drop from the previous guide grade one two three four. or c b a g, so again they are symmetrical.

A good way to remember the names of what not to do is to use opposites because we refer to the treble clef as the treble clef and the bass clef as the bass clef, the top line of the treble clef. is an F and the bottom line of the bass clef is a g and finally the last two guide notes are on the ledger lines, two above the bass clef and two below the treble clef, both are C , so this one here has two C's up for middle C. so the middle C, so that's the first C and that's the second C above the middle C and this is two below for the middle C, so go down to the left, that's the middle C one two, like this that remembering the two is good for these two ledger lines up and the two C. up for the middle C, so the middle C one, two and two, Ledger lands below and two Cs down for the middle C, so one and two again are evenly spaced, so one, two, three, four five and the fifth down from the bottom, G, so one, two, three, four five. o g f e d c memorizing these ten guide notes will give you the ability to play all of these notes because all the neighboring notes are steps or jumps so they can be easily located.

I hope you found it useful. In fact, I have a course aimed at training you to see notes and play them instantly on the piano along with more detailed visual lessons full of useful tips. It also has interactive quizzes that will train your brain first to memorize these guide notes and then to recognize all the notes quickly. You also got speed training exercises that will help you improve your ability to sight-read notes, as well as a workbook download that you can print to further enhance your

learn

ing experience. For more information about it, see the link in the description.

We've also included a special discount code just for you here on YouTube. Well, that's all for now. I'm Arthur from Birds piano Academy and thanks for watching.