Reading Music - Notes on the Staff and Keyboard
What you'll learn
- You will learn to read notes on the staff (treble, bass, and grand staff)
- You will learn to locate notes on the keyboard
- You will learn the relation of the staff to the keyboard
- You will learn to read upper, mid, and lower ledger lines
- You will learn how to read sharps and flats
- You will learn about octave signs
- You will learn scientific pitch notation
Requirements
- No previous musical knowledge is needed since it is a beginning course.
Description
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.)
Who this course is for:
- Beginning students who want to learn how to read notes on a staff
- Anyone who was taught to read notes using mnemonics and never learned to instantly recognize notes
Course content
- Preview03:59
- 00:07Memorization Drills: Treble Staff Landmark Line 1 Notes
- 3 questionsTreble Staff: Landmark Line 1 Notes
- 01:20Treble Staff Landmark Line 2 Notes
- 00:07Memorization Drills: Treble Staff Landmark Line 2 Notes
- 4 questionsTreble Staff Landmark Line 2 Notes
- 00:07Memorization Drills: Treble Staff Landmark Lines 1 & 2
- 7 questionsTreble Staff Landmark Lines 1 & 2 Notes
- 01:26Treble Staff Landmark Line 3 Notes
- 00:07Memorization Drills: Treble Staff Landmark Line 3 Notes
- 4 questionsTreble Staff Landmark Line 3 Notes
- 00:06Memorization Drills: All Treble Staff Notes
- 11 questionsAll Treble Staff Notes
Instructor
![Jonathan Peters](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.6 Instructor Rating
- 3,648 Reviews
- 20,418 Students
- 7 Courses
Jonathan Peters is an award-winning composer currently residing in the beautiful state of Colorado. Since 1990 he has worked as a composer, conductor, arranger, recording artist, educator and author. Mr. Peters holds a B.A. in liberal arts from Thomas Aquinas College and continued his graduate work for a M.M. in music composition at California State University Northridge, which included areas of study in advanced composition, theory, orchestration, and film scoring.
Mr. Peters’ music has been performed both internationally and by orchestras across the United States. He has won multiple awards and recognitions, such as 1st place in the 1996 Composers Today Contest. His nearly 50 works include 2 full length operas, a symphony, orchestral works, chamber music, choral pieces, and works for solo piano.
Recordings by Mr. Peters can be heard on the radio, and his many albums sell in stores world-wide. He is also the author of the Scholastic Music Series, a collection of educational CDs that use music as a tool to teach various academic subjects. His CD, The Constellations - A Guide to the Orchestra, received the highest starred review from School Library Journal and is carried in libraries throughout the country.
Mr. Peters is the author of five academic books on music and three children’s books. Besides teaching piano privately he also gives on-line instruction in music theory, music composition, four-part writing, and orchestration. His on-line courses have been taken by thousands of students from over a hundred countries.