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1. House Of Gold Piano Notes Easy
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Want to learn how to read music? New to the piano? Reading piano notes is the first step for beginners to tackling a piece of music. To be able to play the piano successfully, you must start learning how to read sheet music right off the bat. Follow these simple steps, and you’ll be reading piano notes in no time!

How to Read Sheet Music: An Intro to Reading Piano Notes

Step 1: Label white spaces with FACE and EGBDF for the treble clef

If you want to learn how to read music you should start by looking at the treble clef first. This is the staff that shows which notes to play with your right hand. If you are learning for the first time, you must familiarize yourself with the letter names of the lines and spaces. On your staff paper, label the white spaces with FACE starting with the first space at the bottom of the page and going up, then the lines EGBDF starting at the bottom line going to the top line. There are little tricks to help you remember the names of the lines and spaces – for example, just remember the phrase “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.” Work on memorizing this a little bit each day.

Step 2: Write the note letter names

Now take a piece of music you want to learn, and underneath the music notes of the right hand in the treble clef, write the letter names. (Use a pencil, that way you can erase it later!) This isn’t a great habit to get into in the long run, but it’s perfectly fine for just starting out. If there is one note you’re having a hard time remembering specifically, feel free to just write that one note letter name. Keep in mind you’re only focusing on the white notes on a piano for now. Don’t worry about the black keys, (your sharps and flats), just yet.

House Of Gold Piano Notes Easy

Step 3: Memorize letter names, and move onto bass clef

After you’ve memorized all of the letter names on the lines and spaces for your right hand (the treble clef), you can move on to reading piano notes on the bass clef, where the notes on the lines and spaces will be played with your left hand.

Step 4: Name your spaces ACEGB and GBDFA

Practice drawing the bass clef, which will start on the F line. Then with the spaces at the bottom of the page, name your spaces ACEGB (remember “All Cows Eat Grass,” and don’t forget to add your B at the top!). Next, name your lines starting at the bottom of the page GBDFA (“Good Boys Deserve Fudge Always”). Memorize these notations as well. Now transfer these letter names of the lines and spaces to your piano song from step #2, and name all the notes with your left hand in the bass clef.

Step 5: Find a hand diagram and label each finger 1-5

There is another method with numbers that may be easier for you to read. Find a diagram of your hands and looking at the right hand starting with your thumb, label each finger with 1-5. Do the same with your left hand. There are many easy piano songs to begin with, such as “Three Blind Mice”, “Hot Cross Buns”, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, and “Jingle Bells” that only use notes C-G, or numbers 1-5. Starting on middle C of the piano, put both thumbs on the note, and align both your hands so that your right pinky ends on 5 (G) and your left pinky lands on 5 (F). You can write in the numbers next to letter names, if that helps you more. Remember to begin with only the white notes on a piano.

Now, as you read through your song, play and sing the letter or numbers while playing, which will help you memorize the names of numbers of the notes on a piano. Once you’ve practiced this for a while, try erasing the letter names and testing yourself to see if you still remember the playing pattern and tune of the song.

With these steps, reading piano notes and music will start to become natural to you. For each piece you learn, write in the letter names or fingers, and then erase them when you get comfortable enough. Pretty soon you won’t even need to write them in!

A Different Way to Read Sheet Music: The Mental Flip Strategy

One of the most difficult things about learning how to read sheet music for the piano, as opposed to most other instruments, is that there is not just a single melody to be played. Piano music requires you to play more than one part at a time. Usually these parts are interconnected – they are part of a chord that you need to be able to accurately read.

A Little History Behind Reading Music Notes

Sheet music is read from left to right. The reasoning behind this is that music began as an exercise most focused on the progression of notes in a scale or mode in a horizontal fashion. When more than one voice was sounded together, they usually sang in unison and it was not till the 9th century that musicians became increasingly concerned with vertical harmony and polyphony.

Keyboard instruments, such as the organ, the harpsichord, and ultimately the piano were instruments developed to satisfy this changing aesthetic and the increased importance of vertical harmonies. They were adapted into a notation that had been developed to address primarily horizontal concerns (i.e. what note comes next). This is not to say that sheet music cannot be read for the piano, but rather that the beginning student of piano must learn to think about the music on the page differently than they might read words on a page.

The Mental Flip Strategy for Reading Music Notes

You must flip the orientation of the sheet music in front of you mentally, so you can read the vertical orientation of the notes.

In order to begin to think about and practice this mental flip, there is an extremely helpful strategy you can use. You can actually turn the sheet music so you are reading the notes down the page. Doing so allows you to more easily understand the spacing between the notes and more intuitively grasp where your fingers should be placed on the keys. This technique is also incredibly helpful for visualizing the grand staff as a whole and where the octaves on the keyboard are located.

In order to properly perform this strategy and learn how to read sheet music for piano, follow these three simple steps:

1. Take your original sheet music and flip it clockwise. The line of music you’re working on playing should be read down the page, from top to bottom, instead of across the page.

2. Begin to identify chord units and think about each measure in terms of chordal units. Most bars or measures of beginning piano music contain one or two chords. Sometimes these chords are arpeggiated, other times there is an alternation pattern of notes in the treble and bass in quick succession. Your success with this technique depends on your ability to identify which chord is being outlined. To do this, simply name the notes. In beginning sheet music you’ll most likely see either major or minor triads.

3. Match the notes on the page to your fingers on the keyboard. Notice how, with the sheet music turned, the sheet music is actually a diagram of the intervals between each note and how this realization helps you visualize where to place your fingers.

Here’s how it looks on your sheet music:

With music, there are many different strategies that can help you move quickly to a better understanding. Everyone approaches music differently. Some beginners intuitively grasp complex concepts, others need a little help along the way. Some may even find this strategy more confusing than the standard approach.

Whether or not this technique is right for you depends largely on whether or not it yields a type of “aha” moment, where you can better visualize the spacing of your fingers and their placement on the keys.

If you need further instruction on learning how to read piano notes, consider taking piano lessons. A professional piano teacher can walk you through these steps and ensure that you’re building your skills on a solid foundation of music theory.

Post Author: Liz T. teaches online singing, acting, and music lessons. She is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music with a B.M in Vocal performance and currently performs/teaches all styles of music including Musical Theater, Classical, Jazz, Rock, Pop, R&B, and Country. Learn more about Liz here!

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I've been playing piano for about 8 months. I have a digital weighted 88-key piano with only one pedal.

My friend, who used to play piano, taught me to hold the pedal down when there is an arc in either the treble or bass. So basically I'm holding the pedal down whenever there's an arc anywhere, and my foot is off the pedal when there is no arc.

However, after reading this question:

I feel like I am doing the pedal wrong. In the above link it says that the arc only indicates legato and doesn't have anything to do with the pedal. But isn't legato implied everywhere since staccato is indicated by notes with a dot?

Also, I think the Ped. and * symbols on the piano sheet music have something to do with the pedals. What do they mean?

3 Answers

Your digital piano is equipped with a damper, or 'sustain' pedal. When depressed, notes will continue to ring until the pedal is released or they fade away on their own. Without the pedal, notes will only ring as long as you hold down the key.

Holding Onto You Lyrics

If we had 88 fingers, we wouldn't need the sustain pedal because we could control each note's sustain individually with the key. [Yes, I know this is an oversimplification.] However, music is often written such that certain notes or passages (more than we have fingers for at one time) should ring out until we reach a point; usually a chord change.

The short answer is you should hold down the pedal whenever you want your notes to sustain, and release it whenever you want them to stop.

To learn when the notes SHOULD sustain, your suspicion about the Ped. and * symbols are correct: 'Ped.' signifies you should press and hold the pedal, and '*' signifies it should be released. You may also see an upwards-facing bracket underneath the bottom staff with upside-down 'V's along it, signifying that the pedal should be quickly released and repedaled at those points.

You will eventually use your musical intuition in addition to notation to figure this out. Take Debussy's Arabesque No. 1, for example. This piece is typically bathed in pedal, but the edition will generally not explicitly define it.

Here's a common usage:

Say you had some [bigchord]s, one after another, all different. You need to lift your hands from the keys of the first [bigchord] to set up for the next [bigchord], but doing so would cause the sound to stop while your hands are off the keys, and you want these [bigchord]s to connect (perhaps they are under a slur or legato 'arc'). You would depress the pedal in time to hit the first [bigchord], lift your hands to set up for the next [bigchord] (while the first is still ringing under the pedal), then release the pedal right as you play the next [bigchord], with your hands; repedaling before you release the hands from the keyboard to play the next [bigchord]. This sequence of resetting the pedal at the press of each chord is quite common.

On a real piano, each repetition of this would be lowering the dampers to the strings briefly, in effect 'canceling' the set of harmonies that was ringing from the previous chord in time to play the next chord. If you had just held down the pedal through the entire sequence, each subsequent chord would add dissonance to the notes of the first chord that are still sustaining. Notes of different chords typically clash with one another in a typical tonal context.

Not playing staccato does not imply legato. Staccato simply asks for space by shortening the note in question. A note with neither an arc or dot is just a note of its full rhythmic value. Notes under an arc, legato, are specifically meant to be connected. In a single line, this may mean each note blends into the last one before it is released. With chords, this typically requires use of a pedal to sustain the sound before each articulation.

At the end of the day, listen to lots of classical piano recordings, experiment with your instrument until you have an understanding of how it works, and then do what sounds right.

First, let's look at what the pedal does.

On a real piano, every string has a damper resting on it, muting it until it is played. When you strike a key, the damper lifts from the string before the hammer strikes the string. Then the damper remains lifted until you release the key, so the note continues to sound. When you release the key, the damper returns to its resting position, normally ending the note.

When you hold down the sustain pedal all the dampers are lifted away from the strings. Now when you play a note, it sustains for as long as the string has energy. When you release the pedal, any notes that you're not still holding on the keyboard, end.

Holding down the sustain pedal also has the effect that every string on the piano will resonate with other sounds in the room, or notes played on the piano itself. This is why a pedal 'adds power to a chord'. Play a middle C with the sustain pedal held down, and every other C, or harmonic thereof, on the piano will resonate.

I don't know to what extent that effect is simulated on electric pianos, however.

Now, the meaning of a slur.

A slur (the arc you refer to) says that the notes should run into each other. Not overlap, but continue smoothly from one to the other, as if they are one note making sudden changes in pitch.

A brass/woodwind player would achieve a slur by changing their fingering, but sounding the note with the same breath, without tonguing another note.

A violinist would achieve a slur by changing their finger position, while continuing the movement of the bow.

A pianist doesn't have these options. He must strive to create the same sense of continuity between notes while actually playing separate notes. It's subtle, involving precise timing and control of dynamics. However it doesn't normally involve the sustain pedal.

It's important to note that in the absence of a slur, it's not always necessary to sound a note for its full length. A composer will often write a crotchet rather than clutter the score with a dotted quaver followed by a semiquaver rest. Musical scoring is not precise, and you have the creative freedom to release a note whenever you like. The slur mark is a hint that you should run it into the next note.

To sum this all up:

• You should use the pedal when the score says so; the ped. and * marks
• You should not normally use the pedal to achieve a slur. Do it with your fingers.
• You may choose use the pedal to bring out resonance
• You may use the pedal to sustain a note when your finger needs to be elsewhere

I am in general agreement with the other answers. The principal purpose of the pedal is to not mute notes, so they can be connected more easily. This should be done as directed by the music (either through notation, or the implied structure). Slurs between two notes should generally be played legato with the hands, but can be helped by the pedal. Phrasing slurs (i.e., slurs encompassing many notes, beats, or measures) should almost never be played 'pedal down the whole time'. They are instead meant to imply melodic structure to the performer, who interprets the music and uses the pedal as needed.

However, there are numerous other uses of the pedal. These are definitely more advanced uses that you will probably not use until around the college level.

1. It is not the same thing to play just a single note with and without the pedal. With the pedal depressed, the mutes are off all strings. When a note is struck, sympathetic vibrations occur in the other strings, especially in strings within the harmonic series of the note played. Hence, the sound produced is different: it is fuller, warmer. Thus, the pedal can be used to change the mood or sound of the piece, without altering the legato or connected qualities of the notes.
2. Expanding on the above answer, the pedal can be used as an accent. The pedal is depressed and released exactly at the same time as one note (more typically a chord). Usually this will be used in a sequence of chords. The pedal is not used at all to connect the chords, but instead to accent them. With the pedal going down and up at the exact same time as the keys, there is no extra sound during the brief pause in between chords, but the chords sound louder and with a different quality than normal playing.
3. The pedal can be used to merge two dissonant chords. The most basic theory of pedal use is that you can keep it down so long as the underlying chord stays the same. Sometimes, however, when you play a new chord, you will delay the release and reattack of the pedal in order to have the old and new chords sounding at the same time. This technique is not appropriate for all music or composers. It functions well (provides an interesting sound and transition for the listener), for example, on some more modern composers (Prokofiev, for example). The style of his pieces makes it acceptable for this sort of dissonance. You would never use this technique for earlier composers like Mozart or Beethoven. Use with much caution.
4. The pedal can be used to reduce volume of a sustained chord. This is a very difficult technique. Consider: play a chord, with pedal. Remove your fingers from the keys. The volume will diminish over time at some rate. If you want to increase the rate (i.e., get quieter faster), you can use the pedal. If you release the pedal, the mutes will begin to rest on the strings again, muting them. But, you can release the pedal only partially, so that the mutes just barely touch the strings. This will stop some, but not all, of the string vibrations. Thus, the volume decreases, but the chord is still sounding. (This technique is used by Andras Schiff here.) This is so difficult because usually you will release the pedal to such a degree that it completely mutes the strings. It requires much practice to master.

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