How to Read Sheet Music
Learning how to read sheet music isn't quite so hard as it seems.
If you're totally new to the piano, the easiest way is to start with our interactive adult beginner piano course. For everyone else, this section contains reminders for all the key concepts.
Why Learn to Read Music?
Many new students are tempted by "easy" piano learning apps, which show simplified music (like falling keys).
There are some very important reasons that you should avoid this. It might be slightly easier to start, but it is a crutch that will make your music journey much more difficult for many reasons. Consider the above image:
You can only see a very small amount of music. This makes it hard to prepare yourself for what's coming. You basically need to memorize the piece (and sight-reading or picking up an old piece again is mostly impossible).
Some music simply cannot be transcribed into the simplified version, because sheet music contains much more information. All those mysterious symbols are important!
If you want to play music with friends, or just play a less-well-known song... you'll need to be able to read the sheet music. Sheet music is the global standard (and you can't expect that someone has converted a song).
In other words... sheet music is the "alphabet" of music... not being able to read music is no different than not being able to read a book.
How To Read Piano Sheet Music
- Start with how to read music notes for the basics: distinguishing one note from another, and determining how long it lasts.
Theory and Analysis
- Roman Numeral Analysis is used to express different notes and chords, regardless of the key signature.