This week I started looking at sheet music, and familiarizing myself with the main concept of reading sheet music. A fellow classmate , Celine, gave me the advice to check out a website with sheet music. I found lots of great music on this site that gave me motivation to practice my note reading and writing. Celine also mentioned that writing sheet music helps to familiarize yourself with the notes seen. I took her advice and printed 20 pieces of blank sheet music. I found a few videos explaining sheet music, and some basic techniques to reading and drawing music. I started with just drawing notes on the sheets I had printed. The lines however were WAY to small and it was extremely frustrating.
I resulted to flipping the page over and drawing my own lines. I practiced drawing notes up and down the scale. Although it looks easy, I found it difficult to make my notes perfect and they often were not circle. I referred to a site https://takelessons.com/blog/reading-piano-notes/ with an article How to Read Sheet Music in 5 Easy Steps which guided me as I labelled the notes I had drawn.
After I practiced drawing and labelling my own notes a few times, I printed off a sheet from the site I started this week’s journey on and began labeling the notes. It was a breeze at first but I came across some notes that I had never seen before and totally stumped me. Although I was able to read most of the Happy Birthday song I haven’t tried to play it. That will be next week’s journey.
Hey Meegan,
Reading sheet music is a super essential part of learning to play music, great work! I played the piano for over ten years (let myself get VERY rusty now unfortunately) but I remember labelling the notes was so, so helpful in getting familiar with reading the sheet music and playing along! One thing I always had to keep in mind was to ween myself off labelling everything and eventually only label the ones that I knew I did not know, until I was able to stop labelling all together. I can’t wait to see your progress in learning to play the happy birthday song! You’ve inspired me to go downstairs and take another crack at getting back into playing the piano! 🙂
Hi Meegan! I love that you’re learning to play piano! I’ve been playing for many years now and it’s so fun and even relaxing once you get the hang of it. I agree with Caitlin that it’s good to
eventually not label everything, but for now it’s helpful.
I’m looking forward to hearing you play. Have fun!
Hi Meegan! I’ve always been interested in learning to play the piano so I am so excited that you have the opportunity to learn through our Learning Project. I play the flute, which I learned in school concert band. We learned notes in my first year by drawing them and labeling as well!
As both Caitlin and Tamantha mentioned you should work towards not labeling. I did the same as Caitlin mentioned, only labeling the ones I knew least and working towards not having any. Keep practicing! As you become more familiar with reading sheet music you will get better and rely on your labels less and less! Have fun learning “Happy Birthday”!