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All You NeedTo Know AboutNote Reading

To Play PianoLike A Pro!

Heres some great news for people interested

in learning how to play creative, lead sheet

based piano you dont need to be a great

music notation reader to be a great player!

Think about it when is the last time yousaw a professional playing a piece of sheet

music? Never, right? Good notation reading

does not equal good piano playing.

All you need to know about note reading

for this lead sheet based style of piano is the

same thing they teach kids in the very rst

week of band or choir: to be able to name the

notes in the treble clef, and play a one at a

time sequence of notes with one hand.

First, lets look at a keyboard. No matterwhat the total number of keys you have onyour keyboard (a full size piano has 88) allkeyboards are just made up of 12 notes that

repeat over and over. They look like this

Notice that the black notes come in sets of2 and 3. You can nd a C note on a pianoquickly because it is the white note directlyto the left of a set of 2 black notes. MiddleC is the C closest to the center of your key-board.

Now lets gure out the names of the black

notes. Notice that you can describe the sameblack note by saying it is either up (to theright) from its nearest white note or down(to the left) from its nearest white note.Because it can be described both ways, eachblack note has 2 names. It is exactly thesame key, it can simply be called 2 dierentnames.

If you are describing it as being up from awhite note you call it a sharp of the whitenote, such as C-sharp. If instead you wantto describe it as being down from the whitenote, you call it a at of the white note,such as D-at. Remember, sharps go up &ats go down.

Finally, the symbols used to denote sharpsand ats look like this: # (sharp), or b (at)

C D E F G A B C

C#

Dbor

D#

Ebor

F#

Gbor

G#

Abor

A#

Bbor

Now we need to gure out the correlationbetween the names of the notes themselvesand how they are represented in musicnotation.

When you look at most sheet music you willsee two symbols at the beginning of a set of5 lines:

&?The set of 5 lines on top is called the trebleclef and is the only one you will be interestedin for our style of piano. Classical players useboth of them, but you will NEVER have toread the lower one (called the bass clef). Youcan totally ignore it.

Looking at only the treble clef, each of the5 lines represents a dierent key on the pi-ano, and each of the 4 spaces between thelines also represents a dierent key. The velines, from the bottom to the top, representE,G,B,D, and F. The spaces between thelines, (again from the bottom to the top)represent F,A,C, and E. If you go sequentiallyup every line and space, you will nd thatthey represent the keys one after anotheron a keyboard.

lines

E F G A B C D E F

spaces

Which line or space that a note head (thelittle solid or hollow ovals you see all overmusic) is sitting on tells you what key on thepiano to play. If a note is above or below the5 lines, you need to keep counting step-wiseevery other line & space up or down the key-

board until you get to the note in question.You read music just like a book, from left toright.

&e fg ab cd ef

This pamphlet contains allyou need to know tosuccessfully attend

Scott the Piano Guysworkshop or get started

playing in a creative,chord style approach.

1 2 3

}bass clef

(ignore)}

treble clef

e d c b a

C D E F G A B C

q q q q q

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You know what key to play based on whatline or space the note is sitting on. Now welllook at how long to hold it down. Keep inmind that unlike classical music, in which itis vital to play rhythms exactly as written,in non-classical playing it is actually incor-rect to play things exactly as written. Musicin this style is meant only as a guide, from

which you can stray a bit to interpret it asyou desire. So do not get hung up trying tocount perfectly as do so many ex-pianostudents. Try to play the rhythms as youwould whistle or hum them if you wereleisurely walking down the street.

Having said that, here are the guidelinesfor what notes look like and their durationrelative to each other:

= Whole Note 4 beats

= Half Note 2 beats

= Quarter Note 1 beat

= Eighth Note 2 of them equals 1 beat

- they can also be connected like this

= Sixteenth Note 4 of them equals 1 beat

- they can also be connected like this

If you ever see a dot after a note, just increase its dura-

tion by half of its original value. For example, if a half

note equals 2 beats, a dotted half note equals 3.

Also, stems of notes can go up or down. They both

mean the same thing...

Finally, when we refer to beats, many ndit simpler to think of beats in terms of tap-ping your foot. For example, a half note istwo foot taps while a quarter note is onlyone. The important thing is to keep thetapping steady and consistent so that allthe dierent note durations stay in the cor-rect proportion to one another.

Now take a look at these familiar melodies.Take advantage of the fact that you prob-ably already know what these tunes soundlike. Now connect what you just learnedabout notation with what you know thesesongs should sound like. Try to play thesesimple melodies on your keyboard withyour right hand.

Dont worry about what ngers to use. Justuse what feels most natural to you. The big-ger objective is to quickly identify what keysto play, and how long to play them, based onthe notes you are reading.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

& 44

&3

My Country Tis of Thee

& 43 . J

& . J

Jingle Bells

& 44 .

& .

Joy to the World

& 44 . . j .

j

& . j .

J

w

If playing these melodies seems a bit daunt-ing at rst, dont panic. You simply need to

get procient at quickly identifying whichnote in the treble clef represents which keyon a keyboard.

To get the rest of the story on how to haveFUN playing piano and how to sound goodright away, we urge you to try and make itto a workshop, or nd a certied teacherthat is familiar with this creative, lead sheetbased approach.

You can always nd more info on our web-site at:

www.scottthepianoguy.com

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Enterprises,Inc.

www.scottthepianoguy.com