Pianolessons.com the #1 Name in Piano Lessons Online
How to Read Sheet Music – Nate Bosch

Hi, I’m Nate Bosch with PianoLessons.com. Today I’m going to teach you how to read sheet music. Now in learning how to play piano by ear we’re listening to the notes that we’re hearing and we’re applying it to what we see on the keyboard. Now what we want to be able to do is read those notes, be able to visualize what we are actually doing in the piano. Now a good starting point is middle C, sort of where we start when we’re learning about scales and all that kind of thing. We’ll that middle C is sort of our starting point when we’re looking at sheet music.

Now for piano we have horizontal lines, you’ll see those 2 sets of horizontal lines on a sheet of paper. Now those horizontal lines are called staffs. Now the vertical lines that break up those staffs are called bar lines and those sections are called measures. So we’ve got staffs, bar lines, measures. Now the top of those staffs is all of the notes above middle C. The bottom staff indicates all of the notes below middle C. And when you’re writing it generally if you have a staff on top of each other and you put a line in between and a circle on it that circle you could call the note C. So if that C and you go up a staff we get to the first line on the top of staff. Now the first line on the top staff is an E, if you skip to the next line we got a G, to the next line a B, the next line a D and then an F. Well you can remember E, G, B, D, F or to help you remember just remember this “every good boy deserves fudge” or food or whatever you want to put there but every good boy deserves fudge. So that’s the notes that we find written on the lines of a staff.

Now the spaces in between that we find, well if you can look there on the piano we see—so the spaces in between are the notes in between those one’s right there so F is the first space, go up A, then C, then E. So it spells the word face F, A, C, E. So we have “every good boy deserves fudge” and the word “face” F, A, C, E.

So you thinking well that takes care of all of the white keys, how do we show when we want to, say we want to make G sharp on there? Well this is what a sharp symbol looks like “#”. So we would put, write a note on the G line and we would put that sharp symbol in front of it and there you have it.

Now for a flat, we’re coming down, we’re playing in the key of F for example and we have a B flat in there. How would you right that? Well on the B line you right a note and you put this symbol in front of it “b” that is a flat symbol. So let’s review that a little bit, we’ve got the lines that show us the notes E, G, B, D, and F, then we have the spaces that show us the notes F, A, C, and E, we’ve got a sharp symbol and what that does is if you want to raise the note just add another point here, we’re going to raise the G one semitone we’re going to raise it so that’s a sharp. So we put a sharp symbol in front of it. Now for going to lower a note a semitone, like the B we’re going to lower it you put a flat symbol in front of it.

So now we’ve taken care of all of the notes, but that’s just the right hand. Now if we go below middle C now we get the left hand. So in the right hand the lines were E, G, B, D, and F, every good deserves fudge. Now we start in the left hand it goes up a step the seventh G is the bottom line B, D, F and A the top line. So we could the same words we used there and just say “good boys deserve fudge always”, easy way to remember that. And then we get to the spaces so we got A, C, E, G and you could use something like “all cows eat grass” just to help you remember that. So we’ve got G, E, D, F, and A those are the lines, and now for the spaces A, C, E, and G.

So that is our little crash course on how to read sheet music. If you need some more information you can re watch the video or refer to some other resources found below.