How To Read Music Notes
Hi everyone,
Have you ever wanted to learn how to read music notes? Have you wondered how to go about it at your own pace without having to sit through classes? There are ways that work and ways that don’t work nearly as well.
Remember how they taught the kids in The Sound of Music to read music?
Click--example piano and basic music course
Do (doe), “a deer, a female deer.“
Fa (far), “a long long way to run“.
So (sew), “a needle pulling thread
La (lah), ”a note to follow so“
Ti (tea), ”a drink with jam and bread.”
The tune ends with, “Now you can sing these in any order and once you know the notes you can “sing most any thing“.
Click here for Rocket Piano Course that teaches how to read music notes.
Cute and catchy for sure but I have a question; if you’ve ever tried to use that to read music, how’s that ‘workin’ for ‘ya’? If you’re like me you’re probably thinking, “it works about as well as a kite in a tornado as far as helping me to read music.”
I recall sitting in a music theory class in college and being forced to sing using these terms. The professor would give you the name of a key and then say “So” and you would have to sing the 5th note of the scale he just announced. I can remember the horror of being called on in this sadistic form of learning. It was totally ineffective for me and made learning how to read music notes a miserable experience.
Then there’s the ‘tried and true’ mnemonic approach (a mind/memory and/or learning aid approach.) You remember those; FACE, Every Good Boy Does Fine (EGBDF), Good Boys Do Fine Always (GBDFA), All Cows Eat Grass (ACEG). I recall getting lost trying to do that while trying to transpose.
Those are but tricks to jog the memory. When a person is playing they don’t have time to point at each line and count up 4 from the bottom to find an “F”. The player needs to KNOW what note it is.
To see more discussion on how to read music notes check our article on learn to read music.. see page 1.
I recall the fallacy of learning via mnemonics when I was in beginner band. I had been taught my notes using these techniques. One day I was playing along and the band director stopped us and asked me what note I was playing. I started to count it off to figure out which line and note I was on when the band director screamed me a NEW lesson on how to read notes. It became VERY obvious to me that this was an inefficient way to go about learning how to read music notes. You see, I had not worried about learning the notes but instead relied on the mnemonic crutch. It didn’t work very efficiently when playing.
A program such as Rocket Piano is absolutely the best way to learn music is for the new music student to reinforce while practicing. If you are learning the notes then you need to play and say as you learn. Some sort of activity based system is best. You need one where the new student can do ‘something’ and get immediate feedback.
The same holds true for learning to count music as it does in learning how to read music notes. The new music student needs to learn how to subdivide beats and understand the basics of how that is accomplished so that they can accomplish this when they preview or sight read new music. Once a student has more experience with note patterns then they begin to recognize certain patterns and soon just KNOW how it will sound and not have to physically count every beat in a measure. The fallback is to know how to subdivide the measure into beats and the notes into the proper number of beats.
Another concept the reader must juggle, in order to master learning how to read music notes, is the one of key signatures. This, for those of you new to the idea of learning to play, is the ‘signpost’ in music that tells you what key the song is played in and which notes are played as a natural, a flat, or a sharp.
When you put all of these things together things can get a little ‘busy’ in your mind as you begin multi-tasking efforts to manage these newly learned skills. After all, the player is dealing with seeing all the notes, applying the correct key signature to them, using the correct fingers, placing them on the right notes, counting the notes in the measure and doing all of this in rhythm with the music. At first, when you start to learn how to read music notes, things are coming at you very fast and it’s hard to process it all.
For the person just becoming interested in learning to read music don’t let the previous paragraph intimidate you. When taken in stride and with the right system these new skills come rather naturally and before you know it you are moving on to more complicated things. When you first begin playing music things come you in a RUSH of new skills required to function. After a while it becomes almost automatic and things ‘slow down’ and come more naturally.
Everyone wants to run before they walk when it comes to learning how to read music notes and other music lessons. After helping ‘newbys’ learn music over the years there is one thing that should be set in stone. If the new student doesn’t put in enough time up front then later on things tend to be even more difficult. It’s sort of like math in that if you don’t learn the basics of arithmetic it’s tough to move on to algebra.
One of our reviewed courses will likely fit your learning style and needs. We heartily endorse them. They will help you manage the transition from stumbling through the learning experience to an organized approach saving you loads of time and frustration.
This discussion on how to read music notes, is obviously not intended to teach all these new skills. It is, rather, to point out the importance of finding the correct programs to help you master them in a logical approach and in the correct order and the correct time.
If you’re new to music theory we rated Rocket Piano as our favorite for people just beginning to learn theory. We have other courses reviewed on this site that might be a better choice for more advanced ‘theorists.’
Click here for the Rocket Piano Course if you want to learn more abouthow to read music notes.