How To Read Sheet Music For Piano

Bonus Tip: Write Study And Practice

There are invariable ways to read a sheet. As every music piece is unique, so is how you annotate it. The three factors that make sheet reading more convenient are- study, writing, and practice.

Study the sheet from beginning to end to get the feel and flair of the unexpected turns. Enroll in piano lessons focusing on music theory and providing ample practice sessions.

Write shorthand that works for you. Highlight it with different colors even better!

Practice every day. Do not wait for any rehearsals or examinations to practice hard.

As a piano student, dedicating your time daily to piano or keyboard will build up your skill and bring newer opportunities.

The bottom line is, reading sheet music is like any other skill. The more you practice, the more you adapt, and the better youll get.

Learn To Read The Staff

You cant read a piano music if you dont understand what the staff is and how it works.

So this is the right starting point to start your lesson.

Pianists call the staff the foundation of the written music. In structure, the staff features five lines, numbered1 to 5 from the bottom, and four spaces, also numbered from the bottom.

Your Dream Is Just A Music Sheet Away

You can master music only when you learn it, play it, and practice it daily. The theoretical part of music is essential as fine-tuning a melody. Faster sight reading transforms a music piece from an average to a remarkable music piece.

If you dream of becoming the next Beethoven, perfect your art, read about music, and practice these 8 practical tips to read music sheets faster. With these in place, you will create a legacy of your own.

So, which tip do you find the most beneficial? Do share your thoughts in the comment section.

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Tips To Learn Piano Sheet Music More Quickly

While the step by step tips written above are helpful, they can be time-consuming. There are some strategies to help cut down on the learning curve of reading sheet music. Below are a few ways to speed up the learning process.

Learn How To Play Major And Minor Scales

The majority of composed sheet music is based off some collection, variation, or nod to a scale. The passages at times will even fold in and out of various keys so that they make harmonic sense.

A good way to get a grip on whats going on is to learn how to play major and minor scales. Scales are a great technical aid and can be played using very specific fingering. Once that fingering is mastered, it will be much easier to apply that fingering to the notes in the sheet music.

The eyes and ears will also be better prepared to recognize when a scale is happening in the music leading to faster learning of those sections.

Labeling Patterns

Music is made up of patterns, and its best to recognize those as quickly as possible in your sheet music. With a highlighter, label all of the sections that visually look the same to you. Then compare those notes to see if theyre the exact same pitches or a variant.

A lot of times pianists will find that certain passages will repeat themselves again later in the piece. Even on a basic level of musical form, one can expect the main theme of a piece to present itself in the same hand, another hand, or even the inner voices.

Memorizing The Sheet Music

You Diversify Your Piano Playing Skills

Lets be honest:

You want to become one of the best stage piano music players out there.

Right?

And the only best way to do that is to keep learning. If you can get your hand on music sheet and spend time learning how to read it, youll end up playing an array of musical styles.

When youre able to play different musical styles with ease, from R& B and classical to jazz and blues, you put yourself in a position to become a better composer as youre familiar with varied piano playing techniques.

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What Are Dynamic Marks

Dynamic marks are another important aspect of music reading skills. These are the musical terms and symbols that tell you the quality of each note or phrases of music. Dynamic marks can tell you to play very loud, very soft, or somewhere in between. They are usually written in Italian. We wont go into the details of dynamics marks, but you can find everything you need to know about them in the article below.

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How To Read Piano Sheet Music

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Playing piano by ear is a quick and easy way to learn the instrument. Knowing how to read piano sheet music is much more useful though. Reading sheet music opens up the amount of repertoire a person can learn.

Theres a common misconception that reading piano sheet music is hard, but with a clear strategy, its actually quite easy to learn.

Heres how to read piano sheet music in 11 easy steps

Next, Ill talk about each of these steps and the best ways to implement them into your practice routine. Learning these strategies will allow anyone to pick up a piece of sheet music and read through it with ease!

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You Dont Need To Read Every Single Note

The first thing you need to realize is that you dont have to read every single note.

Instead, focus on recognizing a few landmark notes very well, and then use those landmarks to navigate the notes around it. A step up from a space to a line means a step up on the keyboard, for example.

Its kind of like scanning a document you dont read every single word in a sentence, but you can get what a sentence means without reading each word.

Practicing Piano Hands Separately Slowly

Sheet music should only be digested in small bits rather than all at once. A simple strategy is to start reading each hand separately at a slow tempo. Take your time going through each measure aiming to be as accurate as possible.

To properly sight read sheet music you should focus on eliminating any pauses or abrupt stops. While note accuracy is important, its very tough to develop a sense of rhythm with constant hiccups.

Because our ears are an important part of making music, its important to try to play everything correctly the first time you encounter a piece of music. To help with this I recommend phantom playing.

Phantom playing is a lot like tapping. You will play the music, except not on the keys. Instead, the music will be played in your lap or on the piano fallboard.

What this does is help establish correct finger placement, recognizing the distance between intervals, and also doubling down on the importance of rhythm. Unlike tapping rhythms, what phantom playing also does is develop a feel of transferring weight between individual fingers.

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Understanding Sharps Flats And Naturals

If you are not using a beginner piano method book, then chances are you may be exposed to sharps and flats early on.

Sharps and flats work much like the regular notes except they are the augmented version.

For example, play a sharp note means to play the very next note higher. If the note was F#, then the pianist plays the black key since its the very next key higher. Note the example below.

If the note were flat then it means to play the very next note lower as shown in the example below.

When a note has a natural sign, it means that any sharps or flats are canceled, and the note returns to its a natural state. In the case of a D# for example, it would simply become regular D again.

What Is Musical Notation

Music is a language and like any language, it has a written form. Notation gives musicians around the world a tool to communicate. A composer writes their piece with specific symbols, and if you can read music, you can understand it, decipher it, and ultimately play it.

Examples of early notation have been found on tablets dating back as far as 2000 BC. Modern staff notation, the method we now use, was created by Catholic monks to standardise church music.

Why should you learn to read music?

Learning to read music takes time and effort. There are no two ways about it, its a hard skill to learn.

Some incredible musicians never learned, and there are popular methods that include playing by ear, or by using chord patterns, that ultimately dont need sheet music.

You can absolutely go down this path if you choose. Just know that like riding a bike, reading music is a skill you never forget and the pros massively outweigh the cons.

How should you learn to read music?

When you learnt to read and write, did you treat them as the same task? Of course not. Controlling your hand movements with a pen, learning the shapes of letters, understanding how letters join together are all a radically different skill from using your eyes to figure out what a combination of letters spells.

Learning to read music is the same.

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Note Values Rhythm Signature

Each note has a different length according to its shape or colour: this is the basis of rhythm.

As Claude Debussysaid, “music is the silence between the notes”. When you’re not playing, the notes are replaced by pauses, which also have different shapes and lengths.

Let’s have a look now at the different values:

Just like 1+1 = 2 or 2+2 = 4, these values correspond with each other. Take a look:

A whole note is equal to two half notes, which are equal to four quarter notes and eight eighth notes and so on!

We use beats in order to measure the different values of these rhythms. For example, using a metronome will help you to play in rhythm, beating each time in a regular way. The speed at these beats are played one after the other is called the tempo.

In order to make reading the rhythm easier, we separate the notes into groups on the stave using vertical lines: these are the measures.

Have you understood the meaning of these values? Great! But what do these figures at the beginning of the stave, just after the treble clef, mean? Looking at those are going to allow us to determine how many beats there are in each measure of a piece and what is the beat unit. This is called the measure time!

Understanding the bar or measure time

In a measure time of 4/4, the upper figure indicates the number of beats there are in each bar or measure: here, it’s 4 beats. It’s a 4-beat measure!

Let’s sum up: the 4/4 bar or measure time tells us it’s:

– a 4-beat measure

A 2/2 measure time means:

Reading Piano Sheet Music For Beginners

Learning how to read music as a beginner simply means learning what the symbols on the page are telling your hands to do. This includes knowing the names of the piano keys, the notes on the musical staff, time signatures, note values, and different musical symbols.

But, before we dive into basic music reading skills , youll want to make sure you have all the supplies you need. This means some blank staff paper, an erasable pencil , and a keyboard instrument of some kind. You dont need a Steinway to get started a small keyboard will do fine for learning the basics of music reading. You will, however, want at least 66 keys to play complete most pieces of music.

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An Opportunity To Practice A Flexible Wrist

This exercise, known as âDipping Donuts,â requires shaping the 1 and 3 fingers into a round hole like a donut, then pretending to âdipâ it into an imaginary glass of milk, using a smooth wrist action.

So, all week long at home, they start their piano practice time by âdipping donutsâ on all the Dâs.

First one hand, then the other, strikes each D on the piano, from left to right, then back down again right to left (or the other way around â some free spirit always wants to do it backwards, and it really doesnât matter!

Make a technical exercise out of it, for fun

This reinforces not just the piano keyâs location and name, but also a flexible wrist motion.

How To Tell The Clefs Apart

The clefs are those somewhat abstract symbols that can be found on the left of the score, at the beginning of each stave. They enable you to work out which note to play.

On the piano, we use the G key and the F key .

Depending on the clef used, the notes on the staff will have different values. This brings us to the most important step in deciphering a score: working out the value of the notes according to the key.

The keys are easy to distinguish because theyre big and pretty distinct.

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Key Elements For Beginners Sheet Music

Sheet music created with beginners in mind should have the following:

• arrangements which feature large, easy-to-follow notes
• with each notes name written on the note head
• a layout that makes it easy for any beginner to follow the music on the page
• a variety of categories, including childrens songs, rock, pop, themes songs from popular movies and television shows, and of course, classical

Reading Music By Intervals

Knowing your way around the piano without having to constantly look down is a valuable skill to develop. You can support this skill by learning to read piano intervals. An interval is the distance between any two notes. Recognizing intervals is a quick and practical way to learn how to read sheet music because your fingers respond to the shape of the music. By recognizing common shapes and patterns, you will not have to think as much, and will therefore speed up your processing time, making you a faster reader.

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Learn And Understand The Ledger Lines

As you can see below, music sheet authors sue ledger lines to show pitches above or below lines and spaces of the staff.

Here, the Middle C lies between the treble and bass clef, and is more often than not suitable for beginners to piano lessons.

The advantage with ledger lines is that they make it easy for beginners to grasp the art of reading music notes quite easier.

And although there can be as many ledgers lines above or below the staff, often two or three are enough to get you learning, otherwise the lines can be quite difficult to read.

Why Rests Are Important When Learning How To Read Piano Sheet Music

Symbols we call rests tell us when to be quiet.

Imagine being talked over without pauses for even a breath.

Music without rests are just as annoying.

Remember the basic definition of music being an organized arrangement of sounds and silences thats pleasing to the ear?

Rests are necessary in music. And so, this is why we notate them too.

Rests have the same beat values as notes:

• A whole rest is 4 beats long
• A half rest is 2 beats long
• An 8th rest is 1/2 beat long
• A 16th rest is 1/4 beat long

Now that you understand notes and rests, you can now attempt to navigate written music.

The problem is, if we plot too many of these along our staff, its going to be hard to navigate.

Lets learn how to get it more organized.

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How To Map Out Beats On Paper

To map out musical events on paper, we can simply plot them in a timeline.

In music, we call this timeline the staff:

For the meantime, our staff only has a single line.

The staff is where we can plot our notes and rests .

As you might have guessed, notes and rests can be long or short. This is what makes up rhythm.

However, how do you figure out how long or how short a note is?

Learn The Locations Of The Keys

Before attempting to read any sheet music, there needs to be a clear understanding of what all of those black and white keys mean. This is one of the first things I outline in my piano course which you can check out here. The black and white keys represent all of the different tones of the piano.

As you look at the keyboard the first thing that should stick out to you is how the piano keys are organized in a pattern.

Looking at the diagram above its clear that there are groups of two black keys and groups of three white keys. That pattern of two and three repeats up and down the entire piano.

The first white note located in front of the group of two black keys is called C. Every time you see a group of two black notes, that first white key will always be a C. The lower the C you play on the piano, the deeper the tone will be. The higher the C on the piano, the brighter the tone will be.

The note located in front of the group of three black keys is F. The same logic applies here too. Because the piano is designed around the musical alphabet, its easy to see how the pattern repeats.

The seven different tones on the piano are A B C D E F G. These are the basic notes of the music alphabet, and they can be augmented in many ways which well discuss later in the steps.

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