Reading Music – Notes on the Staff and Keyboard
Learn to read notes on the staff and locate them on the keyboard with this music fundamentals course. Avoid the common mistake of using mnemonics, and instead develop the ability to instantly recognize pitches. Perfect for beginners and those who want to improve their note-reading skills.
What you’ll learn
- You will learn to read notes on the staff (treble, bass, and grand staff)
- You will learn to locate notes on the keyboard
- You will learn the relation of the staff to the keyboard
- You will learn to read upper, mid, and lower ledger lines
- You will learn how to read sharps and flats
- You will learn about octave signs
- You will learn scientific pitch notation
In my 30 years of teaching I have noticed a huge mistake that most beginning teachers make that damages their student’s ability to read music. What is it? The use of mnemonics to help students remember the lines and spaces of the staff. For example, they may teach a student something like “Grizzly Bears Don’t Fly Airplanes” to remember the names of the lines of the bass clef staff.
This might seem helpful at first, but in the long run it only hinders the student and slows down their ability to truly read music. As a musician, you need to be able to recognize pitches instantaneously. It takes time to run through a bunch of silly sayings just to name a pitch. This is time which you don’t have when you are actually reading and playing music.
In this course you will learn to instantaneously recognize notes on the staff. You will do this through memorizing a small group of “landmark” lines and the pitches near them. You will also learn to locate them on the keyboard. Other items you will learn include, upper, mid, and lower ledger lines, octave signs, and sharps and flats.
(This course is part of a series of courses on music fundamentals.)
Who this course is for:
- Beginning students who want to learn how to read notes on a staff
- Anyone who was taught to read notes using mnemonics and never learned to instantly recognize notes
User Reviews
Be the first to review “Reading Music – Notes on the Staff and Keyboard”
You must be logged in to post a review.
There are no reviews yet.