Piano sheet music is a very beautiful script that consists of knowledge and information about how one can play the piano. For a layman, it may seem like just a bunch of random designs that have been drawn on a paper, which sit together to form something like a language. But for one to be able to appreciate the true essence of these writings, one should have a willingness to learn the piano and should be a piano enthusiast.
Piano sheet music consists of all the beautiful melodies and tunes that have been played since the time of the invention of the piano. Countless tunes have been preserved since then and the technology for printing piano sheet music has evolved accordingly. Now it is available at the edge of our fingertips. Anyone who is interested can just type online on the Internet and find out how to learn. There are multiple avenues for one to be able to convert the mere figures on the sheet into beautiful melodious tunes that tug our heartstrings, and uplift any gloomy mood in a jiffy.
Where to Learn Piano Sheet Music
There are different ways through which you can learn piano sheet music. Some of them are either by finding a professional teacher online, to take classes physically under the supervision of a piano teacher, learn from professionals on YouTube, download PDFs that give information and explanations on piano sheet music, read online about it, or join online courses that teach piano sheet music at affordable prices.
With piano being one of the most sought-after instruments to learn, there has been widespread popularity about how to go about learning to play it. There is an abundance of knowledge givers these days, but in order to be able to fully absorb the lessons, there are a few basic elements of the crux and intricacies of a piano sheet music that one must know. Read along to find out more.
How to Read Piano Sheet music: The Basics
When you see piano sheet music script, you might feel baffled with all the different kinds of lines and structures that are present on it. But they just look complicated together; once you started breaking them down into the different individual components, it seems more like a doable job. There are a few very basic yet vital components that form the part of any piano sheet music. They are as follows.
Staff
Any piano sheet music will consist of five lines that are equally spaced. These lines are called at the staff, each line and space representing a different note.
Clef
A clef is usually what determines what the pitch of the music is usually going to be. Is it high or low? It is written at the beginning of the staff in either of the cases? The higher note is called the Treble Clef, which is denoted by a symbol resembling a G; in this case, the lines from the bottom to the top are represented by the letters EGBDF, or Every Good Boy Does Fine (a sentence that is tied to these notes in order to help remember them). And the spaces are denoted by the letters, FACE, from the top down. The other kind of clef note is the Bass Clef, which on the lower pitch and is represented by the symbol that resembles a comma and a colon; the mnemonic that goes along with this is ‘Good Boy Do Fine Always’ (GBDFA) for the lines and ‘All Cows Eat Grass’ (ACES) for the spaces.
Notes
The notes represent the letters on the piano; they do not give us insight about which one of the keys needs to be pressed, but they give us information about how long a key needs to be pressed. The notes look something similar to a magnified version of a comma and are divided into three parts.
The encircled part of the note is called the note head, depending on its placing on the staff lines, and if the encircled part is empty or black will help us understand the exact note that needs to be played on the piano. The filled-in staff heads represent one beat on the piano, while a stem head that is unfilled will get two beats on the piano. And if the staff head alone is present without the stem, then it gets four consecutive beats.
The straight line that extends from the curled part of the note is called the stem; it does not significantly impact how you play the notes on your piano, but it gives a bifurcation between notes that should be played above and below the B line. There is an extended line that is pulled as a curvy line, giving us insight about how long a particular note needs to be played. This is called the Flag.
Dot and Ties
These two are used to determine the length of how long any particular key will be held.
Flags and Beams
These determine the shortened length of a key, along with how fast it should be played.
Time Signature
Anything that has music involved has a beat present. The beat is what dictates the speed and the spaces, gaps or pauses in where the musical notes fill themselves. Ideally, a particular tune needs to complete itself before the new beat begins. This beat is called the Time Signature in the case of piano sheet music. It is represented by writing two numbers, one on top of the other on the Shaft lines. These numbers tell you how many beats per bar there are.
Tempo
This is usually written on top of the sheet of the piano sheet music and tells you how many beats need to be fitted per minute, thereby determining the speed of the music you are going to play.
Middle C
This is one of the most important keys that you will learn while you are learning the piano. It sits right in the center of the piano sheet music. The C major scales are one of the most important because once you start mastering how to play the C major key, the rest of the keys fall in place rather easily. As you read the notes on the piano sheet music from left to right, you can see that the notes of the music are also ascending towards a higher pitch in parallel. If these cover the basics of piano sheet music, there are many other minute details and terms that you will be able to learn as you progress in learning music by reading piano sheet music.
Conclusion
This may sound extremely confusing and a lot of information to take in one sitting. The proven methods of learning are obviously through reading, re-reading, and practice. The first simple thing to do it to take the piano sheet music and try to understand it by marking the different symbols with their respective names. After a thorough revision of this, one can test oneself by trying to recollect what these symbols mean and what purpose they serve on the keyboard. Then this knowledge can further be applied practically on the keyboard, and then by trying to recollect the reading on the sheet. Once this practice becomes regular, the hands will move on their own after thorough practice due to muscle memory.
