Learn to Play Piano Lesson 1: How to Read Music

Hi, Tim here, and welcome out to the very first lesson in the Do It Yourself Learn to Play Piano series. Today we're just gonna be talking about some very introductory subjects to get you started for those of us who might not have that musical background. What we're gonna mainly be talking about today is how to learn how to read music on the staff and what the staff is all about. So with that said, let's get started, shall we? All right, so here we have the musical staff. An important thing to know about the musical staff is that it's made up of five lines. One, two, three, four, and five, and four spaces in between those lines. One, two, three, and four. Now another important thing to know is that a note can either fall on a line or a space, and depending on which line or space will tell you what note to play and where on the keyboard to play that note. Now in just a second right after this, I'll show you how to read notes on the staff. All right, so before I teach you how to read notes on the staff, I'd like to point out two quick things. The first thing is this one. This is the treble clef symbol. The treble clef is usually played with the right hand. If you think about it, the right hand on the keyboard is usually played up at the higher end of the keyboard where the notes higher in pitch are located, thus the name treble clef, and the next one I want to show you is the bass clef. The bass clef is usually played with the left hand down on the lower end of the piano, thus the name bass clef. All right, so now I'm gonna teach you how to read notes on the staff, and the easiest way I've found to do this is to memorize both the lines and spaces for both the treble clef and the bass clef. Now, depending on which clef you're talking about, the lines and spaces will be slightly different, so it's important to memorize the lines and spaces for both clefs. So for the treble clef, the lines of the treble clef are E, G, B, D, and F. Now, I've come up with a little saying that might help you out with memorizing this, and it's every good bunny deserves fudge. Now, the first letter of each of these words will tell you the lines of the treble clef, so E for every, G for good, B for bunny, D for deserves, and F for fudge, so E, G, B, D, and F. Now we'll talk about the spaces of the treble clef. Spaces of the treble clef are F, A, C, and E. Now, I don't have a saying to memorize this one, only because this one happens to spell a certain word, and of course that word is face. So again, F, A, C, and E. Now, you can feel free to pause this video at any time to look this over and maybe write it down to memorize it, and next we'll talk about the lines and spaces of the bass clef. Okay, so now we have the lines and spaces of the bass clef. An important thing I thought I should mention that I forgot to mention in the previous section was that whenever you're trying to figure out the lines or spaces for a clef, that you wanna be counting from the bottom of the staff to the top of the staff. So, we have, for the lines of the bass clef, it's G, B, D, F, and A, or as I like to say, good bunnies deserve fudge always. So, G for good, B for bunnies, D for deserve, F for fudge, and A for always. Now, we'll talk about the spaces of the bass clef. Spaces of the bass clef are A, C, E, and G, or all cows eat grass. And remember that whenever we're trying to figure out the lines and spaces, we're always going to be counting from the bottom to the top of the staff. If you do it the other way around, unfortunately, you'll get the wrong notes. So, I thought that was an important thing to mention. So, there you have it. That is the lines and spaces of the treble and bass clef. All right, so here we have the musical alphabet, another fairly easy subject to understand, but it is important to know. The musical alphabet begins with A, and goes to G, and then it repeats. So, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and then it would keep going C, D, E, F, G, A. So, you might just want to practice knowing what the musical alphabet is. A to G, and then it repeats. You also want to practice saying it backwards. Now, I'll explain why this is once we start playing on the piano a little bit more. So, you want to be able to go A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, A, G, F, E, D, C, B, A. So, when you're learning to play the piano, you will be an absolute expert at the first seven letters of the alphabet, forwards and backwards. So, like I said, an easy subject to understand, but it is definitely worth knowing about. All right, so that concludes our very first lesson. A quick review of things we talked about this lesson. The first thing we talked about was the musical staff, and that the musical staff, if you remember, is made up of five lines and four spaces in between those lines, and depending on which line or space a note falls on will tell you which letter note to play and where on the piano to play it. We also talked about the treble clef and bass clef, and how to read certain notes depending on which clef you're talking about by memorizing the lines and spaces for each. So, next lesson, we're gonna kind of review that again, reading notes on the different clefs, and give you a little bit more practice with it, as well as introducing some more introductory subjects so that we can start playing on the piano hopefully soon within the next couple of lessons.