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Hey guys,
I'm an avid guitarrist, but I never actually bothered learning to read sheet music.
Now I bought an electric piano to further my music education and I really want to do this reading sheet music. I got a piano starter's book that teaches you to read notes, but the songs are pretty tedious and mostly license-free children- and folk songs.
What's the quickest, most fun way to learn reading notes?
Wish me luck in my piano endeavors,
K.
Ps.:
Also, I'd love it if you had some piano sheets for beginners that are children's songs.
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What my piano teacher always does with me:
Shows me an easy piece, I can look at it for some minutes, then I have to play it without having touched a key beforehand. I have to play through it without looking back on the mistakes, the important thing is that I can get through the whole piece without interruption. And most importantly: Do it slow.
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On November 27 2011 02:41 blubbdavid wrote:
What my piano teacher always does with me:
Shows me an easy piece, I can look at it for some minutes, then I have to play it without having touched a key beforehand. I have to play through it without looking back on the mistakes, the important thing is that I can get through the whole piece without interruption. And most importantly: Do it slow.
So won't you just convert the piece into letter-names in your head an learn them by heart, looking at it?
Sounds like a fun way, though 
I just need some songs suitable for a beginner and not too tedious.
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No, I can look at the sheet while playing it. Important, don't look back always look one measure ahead.
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At the beginning, people look at a note on the page, convert it to a letter name, then find the key/string, and play it. Eventually you limit the middle two steps and just see a note on a page and your hands take care of the rest, Like reading a book, you don't look at each letter, find out what letter it is, find out the sound, and then throw it together. You just look at a word and know what to do.
The only real way is to just sight read and sight read over and over until it's natural.
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When I learned to play the piano, there was one important thing that always stayed with me: be patient.
Depending on the difficulty of the song, always start slow. As a beginner, I was taught to count the beats and note lengths to establish a constant tempo/rhythm. I usually learned right hand first, and then left hand and I always went one line or a couple measures at a time.
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Practice practice practice. That's all there is. Practice it until it becomes muscle memory. There's no shortcuts.
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Thanks so much for the advice so far.
As experience taught me, I can be very diligent when it comes to learning an instrument, so I'll stick to it like superglue.
When I play guitar, I use my feet to keep track of the beat, but obviously that doesn't work playing piano.
Do you always use a metronome or what do you do to keep track of the beat?
Also, I'd love it if you had some piano sheets for beginners that are children's songs.
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I learnt with Solfege (French education, hum...)
You learn the notes by their name and you exercise to read them aloud. Only then, you apply to your instrument (and whatevr instrument it is).
I don't know if that's better than the other way round, but it definitely works.
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I took piano for about 7 years yet I still felt at the end that sight reading was very difficult, especially on more complicated stuff. Compared to the guitar, i found that the 2-handed dymanic also adds another layer of complexity.
For the more complex pieces you absolutely have to start with each hand separately and only a few bars at a time. Keeping the beat with your foot certainly still works, but you can also count out loud.
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It's so extremely logical that there really is no problem learning it imo.
Maybe you can hook up your electric piano to your PC and every time you press a key you see the note pop up? The sooner you start relating each note to a sound the faster you'll learn.
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Trial and error...practice makes perfect. Do a little bit of research first, but nothing beats getting shit done.
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I studied piano about 12 years. You can definitely keep beat with your foot on the piano-- that should come way before you bother with the pedal, so if you're learning a song and having trouble with the beat, don't put in the pedal til you have the beat down. I sometimes use a metronome for very very fast music but usually I find it best to just count aloud (this helps when you come to complicated bits you want to count out for yourself, like triplets or fifths).
I learned sheet music from the very start, and have very good sight reading skills for high level stuff (partially from being forced to sight read more as I developed wrist injuries). Sadly, the only thing I can say about this is that there is not a fun way to learn it. It's a lot, and reading music is much harder than recognizing the notes. It's a lot like learning to read in that you have to read a lot of stupid shit for a few years before you can get to any books that are actually interesting or fun. I would suggest Czerny piano exercises very strongly for their simple but very effective teaching of a few notes in different important classical sequences with emphasis on proper fingering.
For any piece of music as you are starting out--
Learn the notes.
Learn the fingering.
Learn the beat.
Then put in the embellishments.
Be diligent about learning good form, because the better you get the more it matters, and it is very difficult to unlearn bad habits.
GL dood.
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On November 27 2011 02:44 kafkaesque wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2011 02:41 blubbdavid wrote:
What my piano teacher always does with me:
Shows me an easy piece, I can look at it for some minutes, then I have to play it without having touched a key beforehand. I have to play through it without looking back on the mistakes, the important thing is that I can get through the whole piece without interruption. And most importantly: Do it slow. So won't you just convert the piece into letter-names in your head an learn them by heart, looking at it? Sounds like a fun way, though I just need some songs suitable for a beginner and not too tedious.
it works with tedious pieces, its just harder ;3
edit:
On November 27 2011 04:29 RedJustice wrote:For any piece of music as you are starting out-- Learn the notes. Learn the fingering. Learn the beat. Then put in the embellishments. Be diligent about learning good form, because the better you get the more it matters, and it is very difficult to unlearn bad habits.
i personally feel that learning the beat should come first
my general approach is to figure out the notes and speed of notes at roughly the same time, which can be quite difficult at times, but with how my mind works i hear the piece and then internalize the rhythmic patterns, at which time i pick up the notes (and fingerings) then i work on the notes to match them as precisely as possible to how the music goes in my head (if i didnt have a track then i just played through the music in my head from the sheet music - this is hardest with piano music due to the numerous simultaneous lines)
so, in summary
learn the tempo/piece and what it is supposed to sound like
learn the notes/fingerings
add in embellishment, noting what it sounded like in a track or dynamic markings
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I learned notes first, then numbers after and I have to say its really simple switch. I don't see it being very hard at all to go from the other way.
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You guys are so nice and helpful, thanks a bundle!
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On November 27 2011 05:03 unit wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2011 02:44 kafkaesque wrote:On November 27 2011 02:41 blubbdavid wrote:
What my piano teacher always does with me:
Shows me an easy piece, I can look at it for some minutes, then I have to play it without having touched a key beforehand. I have to play through it without looking back on the mistakes, the important thing is that I can get through the whole piece without interruption. And most importantly: Do it slow. So won't you just convert the piece into letter-names in your head an learn them by heart, looking at it? Sounds like a fun way, though I just need some songs suitable for a beginner and not too tedious. it works with tedious pieces, its just harder ;3 edit: Show nested quote +On November 27 2011 04:29 RedJustice wrote:For any piece of music as you are starting out-- Learn the notes. Learn the fingering. Learn the beat. Then put in the embellishments. Be diligent about learning good form, because the better you get the more it matters, and it is very difficult to unlearn bad habits. i personally feel that learning the beat should come first my general approach is to figure out the notes and speed of notes at roughly the same time, which can be quite difficult at times, but with how my mind works i hear the piece and then internalize the rhythmic patterns, at which time i pick up the notes (and fingerings) then i work on the notes to match them as precisely as possible to how the music goes in my head (if i didnt have a track then i just played through the music in my head from the sheet music - this is hardest with piano music due to the numerous simultaneous lines) so, in summary learn the tempo/piece and what it is supposed to sound like learn the notes/fingerings add in embellishment, noting what it sounded like in a track or dynamic markings
Pretty much this, except it's not as neat as it looks. You sort of need to keep track of the rhythm, fingering, and notes simultaneously (including deco); the general split-second thought process as I sight-read/practice goes somewhat like:
1. Oh it's a B (keep this in mind so that you can actually hit the right note/reference the right tone later for consistency)
2. What's the best fingering/what fingering do I have for it? --> Do this fingering (unless it's like 5 levels below what you usually play, usually sticking with a consistent fingering is best for practice)
**2.ext. What should this note generally sound like (before I go for it)? Bold, soft, cres., morendo, what?
3. Ok now I got on this note, what's the rhythmic pattern for it? Hold it for 1-e-and-a or whatever amt you need.
4. I need to think ahead to the next note/phrase...
As you practice (SLOWLY; half-tempo; settle for nothing less than perfect intonation and rhythm), and go over this somewhat consciously, you should slowly start doing 1 instinctively, then 1 and 2 instinctively, then 1, 2, and 3 instinctively (with piano sync. it's much easier; for solos it doesn't really matter too much; with orchestra it's a bitch). After you master all those basics, the only thing you end up really thinking consciously about is "shit I gotta really make this last part a headbanger".
EDIT: Lmao I realized that I was subconsciously using intonation in addition to rhythm...you lucky keyboard players you. Well, other than intonation, the principle still holds.
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ok learn the chords so that when you see a group of notes you know what to play. Learn all the keys so you you know what notes to play. Then just read as much as you possibly can, and when you start learning a piece go to a new one. You'll gradually get more and more used to the way the notes looked. Focus btw on playing both hands together so that you don't get in the habit of only looking at one clef.
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On November 27 2011 07:03 IamBach wrote:
ok learn the chords so that when you see a group of notes you know what to play. Learn all the keys so you you know what notes to play. Then just read as much as you possibly can, and when you start learning a piece go to a new one. You'll gradually get more and more used to the way the notes looked. Focus btw on playing both hands together so that you don't get in the habit of only looking at one clef.
Haha, that name is gold.
Thanks for this advice also.
No all I need are some beginner pieces that sound moderately nice
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every good boy deserves fudge
face
key to getting better at anything is doing it
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The only advice I have to become a master at sightreading is to play and practice as many pieces with different rhythms as you possibly can. It's easier to sightread on a single-note instrument, for example the trumpet or saxophone, than it is on a multi-note instrument like the piano or guitar. I feel that this is because there are always more notes to be played at once on the multi-note instrument's sightreading music.
Eventually you will come to a point where almost every measure in the sightreading will be familiar to you in some way from some song you practiced even a year beforehand. The key to sightreading for piano is getting each measure's rhythm correct as quickly as you possibly can so you can basically skim the page, say "yup, I know how to play each of those measures individually" and then it becomes a breeze. This can take years to master. There's a saying that it takes 10,000 hours to master anything... well I think sightreading takes longer.
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get a pencil and write down finger numbers above the notes. for piano 1 = thumb and 5 = pinky.
if you have problems with scales then write down the flat or sharp symbols by the notes too
also, get a metronome
with enough practice, muscle memory will take over
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Just a friendly hint, when learning sheet music, especially since you have a guitar background, it is most useful to focus on intervals more than the actual notes themselves. If you know the first note is a C and you see that the next one is a major third up, you don't have to think "E", you just think "third" and your fingers know where to go. Get used to the different intervals and what they look like, and associating them with where fingers go on whatever instrument you're playing. It's all relative - once you've read the first note and gotten you're bearings, the rest don't need to be named.
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EPT
