Tips for Reading Piano Music
With a little success under your belt, you can begin to tackle the job of learning to read music. Of course, many musicians do not know how to read music. They just hear a song and play it, as they say, by ear. These musicians can improvise on any simple themes and come up with elaborate renditions of popular songs. These players know their instruments as well as singers know their own voices.
You may be someone who can do that. There will be some information later on about chords and improvisation. However, if you are a beginner just finding out about the piano, it is more likely that you need the help that written music can provide you. Furthermore, learning to read written music can open up a whole new world to you. You can learn piano songs that you have never even heard before. If you want to repeat the performance, you will have the sheet music to guide you note for note.
There is a lot to learn since you have to understand how the notes are depicted. You have to understand how the staffs they are written on look like. You will begin to understand how flats and sharps are represented and how the music’s rhythm is shown. Once you learn these basics, you will be able to build on the knowledge.
You can really learn a lot by simply looking at a piece of music. If you don’t have any sheet music to look at, now is the time to borrow a book from a friend or the library or even buy one. Get a hold of some sheet music, a songbook, or a hymnal and study the music.
You will notice that there are groups of five horizontal lines. If the music is for both hands, it will have two of these groups of lines connected together by a longer line along the side. The horizontal lines are called the staff. You can get staff paper that is already marked with these lines.
Along the left side of the staffs you will find the clef markings. The treble clef marking is for the upper staff. The treble clef symbol looks like a fancy backwards S that has a line going through it vertically and curling underneath. You will start out by playing the notes on the treble clef with the right hand.
On the lower staff you will find the bass clef sign. It looks a lot like a backward C with two dots on the right of it. The bass staff indicates the lower notes that are played with the left hand. The upper and lower staffs usually repeat several times down the sheet. Take a look at your written music and locate each of the staffs. Once you do this you will be ready to learn to read the notes.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 4:26 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.