Videos
Hi I am a learning piano by myself.
And I wanted to understand how to read sheet music better.
I'd be delighted if any of you have a good free/cheap resource to learn all about sheet music 😃
I thought it would come naturally as I learn piano but after a couple months although I confidently know all the physical keys I still have to go from the treble and bass clef on the sheet and say the notes in order to find what note I need to play.
Is there a good exercise (or exercises) that can help me see the note and instantly know what note it is?
I could not find a note-key chart sheet that fully satisfied me, so I decided to make one myself. Maybe other beginners will also find this helpful.
Link to the pdf: https://www.file-upload.net/download-14763443/note_key_chart_sheet.pdf.html
Link to the MS Word file, feel free to edit it to fit your own needs: https://www.file-upload.net/download-14763442/note_key_chart_sheet.docx.html
[Since it looks a bit misleading: The Bitcoin-donation-address that appears on the download site is not mine, but the file hosters.]
I would say three things:
System position. Basically people think bass clef for the left hand, treble clef for the right hand. But, clefs can change. The grouping of two staves makes a system for the grand staff. Rather than clef type, it's the system position that matters. The lower staff is for the left hand and the upper staff is for the right hand.
...in that example the left hand is the lower staff and the clef changes are used to keep the notes on the staff with fewer ledger lines.
Hand abbreviations. L.H. for left hand and R.H. for right hand (or m.s. and m.d.) will label parts of the notation when the notation move the hands between the usual staves...
...that was from the Mozart Nannerl Notebook.
Stem direction. In some cases stems up mean right hand and stems down mean left hand...
Keep in mind stem direction is also used to show multiple voices played by one hand...
...so, stem direction doesn't always mean left/right hands.
The right hand plays the upper staff, and the left hand plays the lower staff, regardless which clefs are displayed. The clefs only tell you how to interpret the lines and spaces; they don't tell you which hand to use.
When playing duets, for example, it's very common that one part will have both hands indicated in treble clef and the other both hands in the bass clef.
Edit: As Andrew Chin mentioned, sometimes there will be an explicit instruction as to which hand to use. Otherwise, the above holds.
An example of explicit instructions for which hand plays which notes, see What does the L-shaped symbol attached to C5 and G4 on the top staff mean?
For example the first few notes are sharps, what tells me that they are sharps? Like I said, I'm very new to this so this might be very obvious but I'm just not getting it 😅
In my opinion it's easiest to forget the names of the notes for a while, and just learn how to find the positions on keyboard based on sheet music. The connection between the staves and the piano keyboard is really simple: one white key for one position on staff. If there's a sharp, use the next black key to the right, and if there's a flat use the next black key to left. A good starting point is to remember just the location of different Cs (or Dos if you like it more) on the staves and count from there. After you do the counting exercise a few times, you will start to remember other locations too.
The same goes for scales and chords: When you see an ascending or descending row or dots, you don't have to read each of them, just to recognize it's a scale, and when you become familiar with different shapes of stacks of dots, you can play the chords without thinking what they are called.
Remembering where each note is is virtually impossible with 88 notes to choose from, looking at the music involved!
However, you don't need to remember each and every one, as there's a pattern that repeats several times up and down the piano keyboard, and the two staves in the music written for it only encompasses around half of those! Good news so far.
Every note on the piano has its own special place, and it works best alphabetically. Your do-re-mi may be more familiar to you, but it probably will slow you down here. Firstly, there are two do-re-mi systems, fixed do and movable do. Fixed do may help, as that means each and every C note is the white key to the left of the pair of black ones. At least that will give you a start to navigate your way round.
If, quite possibly, you are familiar with movable do, it won't help much: that one means the root of every key, though a different note, is called do. Quite confusing for a beginner.
So, let's hope it's fixed do (or C). Travelling up the keyboard, it's sequential, C, D, E, F (left of the 3 black keys), G, A, B, and back to left of the next black pair, another C. Using fixed do, the same idea exists, but substitutes tonic sol-fa names for the letters. Just hope you're not using the German system which incorporates another letter - H.
That's all the piano part, nearly. Using letters only, a good way to familiarise with where each lives is to make up words, and play those words. As in DAD, BADGE, CABBAGE, DEAF, BEEF, and so on, until you can look at a word and play it straight off. Black keys can be ignored for now - they don't play this game. For now, it doesn't really matter which octave you play each letter in, it's fun to mix 'n' match. But familiarisation of the instrument is an important, and in some ways detached part of learning music - where each note lives.
As far as the dots on the sheet are concerned, there is correlation. With 2 staves of 5 lines, it helps to consider that middle C is in fact in the middle. It has its own little line - no permanent one. When needed, it has a 'leger line' under the treble, or above the bass clef.
From that datum point, it's not too difficult to extrapolate where on the staves the other notes live. The oft-used mnemonic upwards for the dots on the treble clef lines EGBDF is 'Every Good Boy Deserves (something beginning with F), the spaces revealing FACE. In the bass clef, spaces reveal All Cows Eat Grass, unsurprisingly. Of course, it will be more memorable for your own silly sentence to be utilised.
I hope all that's a good starter in response to what I think the question asks. Take it all slowly, and get a good teacher!