Download The Very Beginning: Reading the Staves ABCDEFG

The Very Beginning: Reading the Staves
To get started reading music, you need to understand the “note names” - the way we refer to all pitches.
No matter what your instrument is, it’ll help to use a piano keyboard to understand how things are
organized.
The deepest level of note names in English is a scale that begins with the letter A and proceeds up
to G. After G it repeats itself, so the note above G is A (and the note below A is G.)
... E
F
G
A B C D E F G
A B C ...
These are the white keys on the piano. I think most people orient themselves at the piano by finding
C (just to the left of the two black keys) - the rest of the notes fall into place from there.
A B C D E F G A B C D E F G
Piano music is usually written on the “grand staff,” a combination of treble clef and bass clef. The
space in the middle is home to “middle C.” (Middle C should also be roughly in the center of your
keyboard.)
treble clef
middle C
bass clef
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As we move up and down on the basic scale, we’ll alternate between lines and spaces, like so:
Treble Clef
On the far left of each staff there is a fancy-looking symbol called a clef. It tells you how to read
the pitches on the staff.
The treble clef is also known as the “G Clef.” It draws a loopy circle around the note G.
G
Bass Clef
Bass clef puts two dots around the note F.
F
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Memorizing the Lines and Spaces
People like to memorize the lines and spaces on the staff with little mnemonics.
The lines on the treble staff are “Every Good Boy Does Fine” or “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge”
E
G
B
D
F
fine
does
boy
good
every
Remember, in hitting all the lines we are skipping over every other note, or making “thirds.”
A B C D E F G A B C D E F G
The spaces in the treble clef spell FACE
F
A
C
E
The lines in the bass clef are “Good Boys Do Fine Always”
G
B
D
F
A
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And the spaces are “All Cows Eat Grass.”
A
C
E
G
Beyond the Mnemonics
As you begin to study music, you really don’t want to have to stop and count up “Every Good Boy...”
with each new note. You’ve got to learn to read the staff as naturally as you can read words. As you
learn music on your instrument, hopefully the notes on the staff will become more and more familiar.
Also, I am a big fan of a method introduced by Georges Dandelot in his Manuel pratique pour l'etude
des cles (Practical Manual for Learning The Clefs). I’ll post some PDFs from it on this website.
What’s great about the Dandelot book is that it starts with a few important pitches and rolls out the
rest in a slow, systematic manner. The text is in French, but as long as you understand how to use
the book it doesn’t matter. It’s very simple.
As it begins in treble clef, it uses only C’s and G’s.
C
G
C
G
So, the first exercise looks something like this.
Practice your reading by chanting the names of each note in rhythm, like “C! G! C! C! G!” and so
on.
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Once you are comfortable with that, move on to the next exercise. Now Dandelot adds little “neighbors”
to each C and G. He also does you the favor, at first, of marking every C and G with a white half
note and every neighbor with a blackened-in quarter note. We’ll ignore this distinction and chant
every note at the same speed, like “G A G C B C” and so on.
That’s how it works. I highly recommend this method of practicing your note-reading.