## Reading 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](/lessons/adult-beginner-piano.md) 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:

1. 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).

2. Some music simply cannot be transcribed into the simplified version, because sheet music contains _much more information_. All those mysterious symbols are important!

3. 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](/about/how-to-read-sheet-music/how-to-read-music-notes.md) for the basics: distinguishing one note from another, and determining how long it lasts.

## Theory and Analysis

- [Roman Numeral Analysis](/about/how-to-read-sheet-music/roman-numeral-analysis.md) is used to express different notes and chords, regardless of the key signature.