Reading Music - Notes on the Staff and Keyboard

In my 30 years of teaching I have noticed a huge mistake that most beginning teachers make that damages their student’s ability to read music. What is it? The use of mnemonics to help students remember the lines and spaces of the staff. For example, they may teach a student something like “Grizzly Bears Don’t Fly Airplanes” to remember the names of the lines of the bass clef staff.

This might seem helpful at first, but in the long run it only hinders the student and slows down their ability to truly read music. As a musician, you need to be able to recognize pitches instantaneously. It takes time to run through a bunch of silly sayings just to name a pitch. This is time which you don’t have when you are actually reading and playing music.

In this course you will learn to instantaneously recognize notes on the staff. You will do this through memorizing a small group of “landmark” lines and the pitches near them. You will also learn to locate them on the keyboard. Other items you will learn include, upper, mid, and lower ledger lines, octave signs, and sharps and flats.

(This course is part of a series of courses on music fundamentals.)