Music / Notes

[Sonrisa]

I have started taking music lessons, piano to be exact. and am having a hell of a difficult time with reading, remembering and whatever else notes.

so far i am only able to differentiate between whole, half, quarter and eighth notes. but reading and playing them seems to be IMPOSSIBLE

BTW i am doing the do re mi fa sol la si do, instead of ABCDE

please help!

[WICKED THOUGHTS]

oh, well.. im the sameway. Lol I just play by ear and cant read music like shiet haha You should teach me... duh

[Sonrisa]

i can't even play i am tone deaf lol

[misombra]

just keep practising!

[Sonrisa]

just keep practising!

i wish it was that simple
i try and then i get frustrated and give up. any my lesson is only once a week.

[doppelgaenger]

I've always been musically inclined, so I'll give you a few pointers. I've been playing piano since I was 5 years old, but I didn't learn how to read music until I was in high school and was asked to join the high school band.

When you're trying to read music, particularly piano music, there will usually be treble clef and bass clef. Treble basically signifies the melodic, higher pitch in a score, and the bass signifies the lower pitch. This is a treble clef:



Forget about bass for a second. The symbol on the very left means it's treble. You see there are 5 whole notes on each line, and they are marked EGBDF. Remember this: EGBDF stands for Every good boy does fine. The notes between the lines spell out FACE. Put them together and it goes EFGABCDEF. See how repetitive it is? You can go all the way up the piano and mark each white key with A, B, C, D, E, F, or G (ignore the black keys for now) Also, notice how there are 8 letters. BTW, the bass clef notes have a different order, but I won't get into that. You should focus memorizing the treble clef first.



If you look at a piano, you will see this pattern repeat itself across the keyboard. The first key in the sequence is always C. A good way to practice memorizing all the keys on a piano is to memorize first where all the Cs are. To the right of C, you count up to G and then go back to A and count up to G and then back to A and so on.. To the left of C, you count down to A, and start with G. Pretty easy, huh? Now back to what I said about there being 8 letters.... on the keyboard, you obviously are going to have quite a few Cs. We distinguish a sequence between two of the same letters as an octave. A C octave goes like this: CDEFGABC. This is important because a low pitch C and a high pitch C will blend together without any audible dissonance. I know, it sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo, but you really need to be in front of a keyboard, pressing the buttons as you read this.

And now for the black keys.... ok, every key on the piano is called a "half step". When you play the piano, the black keys are pitches that are between the white keys. This is important because E is only a half step down from F, but F is a whole step down from G. A whole step is two half steps. In fact, you can see this on the keyboard - there's no black key between E and F, but there is between F and G. So basically, when you're reading music, you refer to all the black keys on the keyboard as sharp or flat (sharp is the # and flat is the b). I know that it's really confusing and it's a lot to get used to, but once you have it, it's permanent. I can walk up to a piano or a guitar or an instrument that I've learned to play with and I still know where all the notes are and everything, even if I haven't played for months or years.

If you get really serious about piano and music, you'll eventually start studying music theory, which is really simple, but at the same time, is very mathematically complex. It really makes this beginner stuff seem so easy. And it is easy, just remember, practice makes perfect, and you can certainly learn how to play, there's no doubt about it.

[Sonrisa]

is it easier to learn the ABCDE way or the do re mi?

[Only-virgins]

I write my own music. You get used to reading notes. Transcribing my music to sheet can be really annoying at times. There is no other way around it other then practice.

is it easier to learn the ABCDE way or the do re mi?

Neither. Come on man, it isn't that hard to remember 7 notes and then it moves up or down an octave and repeats.

[doppelgaenger]

It's true what he said about the 7 notes. But it helps to know what the names are.

[RdHrshyKss]

i played the violin for many years when i was young. it's easier to learn when you are young, kids' brains are like sponges, so don't be so hard on yourself. i'm very similar to you in that i get extremely frustrated when i don't get something right away. all i can say is be patient and practice, practice, practice. study the notes and their positions, even label them if that helps. you'll eventually get the hang of it and the reward will be oh so sweet.

[Sonrisa]

i sort of gave up on remembering notes and wrote them down on masking tape all over my piano. hopefully with time i will get used to where they are located. damn, i feel like i am making no progress at all.

[RdHrshyKss]

i sort of gave up on remembering notes and wrote them down on masking tape all over my piano. hopefully with time i will get used to where they are located. damn, i feel like i am making no progress at all.

nah, labeling them was a good idea. you'll pick it up quicker then. the problem is visually seeing it on the page and then locating the appropriate keys by memory. after some time you'll associate them quicker. we did the same thing when we were younger. we'd tape our violins so that we could actually see where our fingers needed to go. after awhile it just became 2nd nature. just be patient...you'll eventually get it.

[Liam_680]

practice makes it perfect <3 eventually.. you will get used to reading it that it will all feel natural just like how we have learned our abc's and 123's when we were much much younger