How to Read Notes Fast – The Landmark System

#Read #Notes #Fast #Landmark #System

All right in this video i’m going to teach you as quickly as i can how to read notes on a page so first here’s a piece of music we have the title at the top the composer in the upper right hand corner and the music below

All these dots with stems are notes and correspond to an exact note on the piano for example this note here is g but it’s not that g or that g it’s specifically this g so every note is an exact note on the piano and reading music is just reading

These exact notes and playing them left to right these notes are all lined up together so you play them together As you move forward it’s just like this Okay now that you understand that each of these notes corresponds to an exact note on the piano and playing notes is just playing it left to right now let’s get into actually how to read these notes so notice these notes fall into two areas a top area and a bottom

Area each of these areas is called the staff the foundation upon which notes are drawn now notice both staffs have a different sign the top sign is called treble clef and the bottom sign is called bass clef what kind of notes does a bass player play while he or she plays

Low notes so the bass clef covers all the low notes on the piano the treble clef covers all the high notes now notice in each staff how many lines are there if you counted correctly you’ll see that there are five lines with four spaces in between those lines notice that the

Notes in the music either fall on a space or on a line there are notes that fall outside of the staff as well these are called ledger lines and we’re going to get into that very soon now here we have a clean staff and here the first

Line in the treble clef is an e however the first line in the bass clef is a g the second space from the top is a c but in the bass clef that same note is an e The lines and spaces are different in both clefs so reading music becomes a memorization challenge how music teachers have approached this challenge is by giving students mnemonics to memorize like every good boy does fine memorizing that phrase helps you memorize the five lines of treble clef are e g b d f

And the spaces are face f a c e the bass clef also has its own mnemonics to help you memorize the lines and spaces there as well the problem with this method is if you want to play the last line of the treble clef you have to think

Every good boy does fine oh it’s an f that’s slow and painful because you have to go through the whole acronym to get to that f it also teaches you to memorize that that line is an f but it doesn’t teach you which f one thing you

Can get from looking at this picture is noticing a pattern notice as you go from line to space to line to space you’re moving up the alphabet you’re moving consecutive letters so the first line there is e right every and then you go to the space which is f you know the f

In face then the next line is g then the space is a and you go up to b and the next space is c right then line space line you’re at f and that’s the pattern of going from line to space you’re moving up letters now another important concept is what if

We want to keep going higher well we have the final line there at f we know that you have to go line space line space so the next thing has to be a space so we draw the g at the top of the line it doesn’t have a line running

Through it so it’s technically space and then we have the g there now what happens now that we’ve ran out of lines because after a space is a line so what you do is you start drawing your own lines and these are called ledger lines

So the next note is going to be an a we know right after g is a and it’s going to look like this so now we have our a which is on a line and now we need a space so we draw the line and we draw

The note right above it so it’s a space and then we need a line again so we draw two ledger lines and we have a c and you can just continue this pattern and that’s how ledger lines work so you’re just drawing in the lines and it

Also works as you go below a staff for example in the bass clef like here so with this knowledge now of lines and spaces we can replace every good boy does fine with what i call the landmark system instead of memorizing 18 lines and spaces in a specific order memorize

Just a few landmarks evenly spaced across the keyboard so our first landmark in the music is middle c right here so middle c is the c in the middle of your piano it’s the fourth c from the bottom of an 88 key keyboard and the third c from the bottom on

Smaller sized keyboards now our next landmark is treble g see it’s going to be the second line from the bottom in the treble clef so the second line from the bottom is treble g now see how we can connect the two landmarks you have middle c

Then after above that you have d right line to space then you have the next line e and then you have space f and then look you’re at g c d e f g treble g is the g above middle c now our next landmark is in the bass clef

This is going to be bass f right you have an f in the bass so that’s going to be here and that is the f below middle c notice what happens when we move up from bass f so we have f on a line then space is g line a space b

And then line ledger line right there middle c middle c is the first ledger line above bass clef and the first ledger line below treble clef so a lot of people when talking about landmarks write out three landmarks like this middle c looks the same in base clef and treble clef so

It’s just right there in the middle notice also that g and f are equally four notes away from middle c so you have middle c here you have treble g here and you have bass f there between c and g you have three letters

D e f and between f and c you also have three letters and visually you can see a sort of relationship treble g is the second line from the bottom of treble and bass f is the second line from the top of bass clef now that we’ve memorized these

Landmarks figuring out the notes around them is easy if this is g what is this note well it’s right above g right so right above g is a and this note here would that be well it’s right above middle c so it’s d and this note here it’s below f so it’s e

Alright so now that we have these three core landmarks let’s expand outward to the next landmarks so our next two landmarks are treble c and base c notice again you’re expanding equally outward so you have your treble g and your bass f now you go three letters out

And you have your two cs so you have your base c and your treble c and notice that they look visually very similar too so again with the treble from the bottom up it’s the third space and in the bass clef from the top bottom it’s the third space and again we can

Just figure out notes around it so what is this note well it’s above c right so it’s a d what is this note it’s below c so it’s a b and if you wanted to go even lower what’s this note well it’s just two

Notes below c so it’s an a abc right cpa all right now let’s expand out again to our next two landmarks and what we have is high g and low f And visually they look very similar too high g is touching the top of the clef in treble clef and low f is touching the bottom of the bass clef right it’s the space that’s touching the outsides and say we look at high g here right above high g is our first ledger line

That’s an a then we have the space b then we have two ledger lines c and that’s our final landmark so we have high c which is two ledger lines out can you guess what low c is gonna look like well it’s always gonna be like a mirror

Right it’s always gonna be an inverse so two lines out is high c two lines out is low c so two lines below the bass clef so there we have it we have our nine landmarks in treble clef the landmarks are just c’s and g’s and in bass clef

The landmarks are all c’s and f’s visually it’s easy to remember on the outsides you have high c and low c which are two ledger lines out and then you have high g and low f which are touching the stabs on the outside right just on the space

And then within the clefs it’s inverse so you have your treble c which is three lines from the bottom of treble and you have your bass c which is three lines from the top of bass and then from there you have your treble g which is two lines from the bottom

And you have your bass f which is two lines from the top and then right in the middle you have your middle c which looks very similar in the treble and the bass clef and because now you know the line and space relationships you can figure out the

Notes around these landmarks very easily and if you memorize these nine landmarks you’ll have access to all these notes if you’re interested in becoming a fast note reader i’ve actually already created a note reading boot camp where i go in depth on this method and drill you through exercise after exercise until

You can read notes really fast feel free to check that out in the description below alright thanks so much for watching and i hope to see you again in another video