Start With
Piano Music Notes

Here’s a table of activities to settle into on the weekend, starting with the most attractive activity and ending with the least attractive:

1) Going to the beach.

2) Watching any sort of screen: big, small, flat of otherwise.

3) Eating a lot of junk.

4) Sleeping.

5) Practicing naming notes.

6) Buying music supplies .

7) Mowing the lawn and painting the house.

8) Getting rid of big hornet’s nests.

9) Starting a repair job that you know you won’t be able to finish properly.

10) Going on a water-cleansing diet.

Hey, note naming didn’t do badly at all. It made the top five, which is good enough… let’s get started! Consider the following two bullet points:

The first bullet point illustrates the most common way of labelling notes. The second bullet point can be interpreted in two different ways. In a fixed-doh system, do (another way of spelling of doh) always is the note C, re is always a D and so on. The other system involves a moveable do, whereby do is the first note of whichever key a composition happens to be in.

The most common clefs in use are the treble, bass and alto clef. Other clefs include the tenor, soprano and percussion clefs, the latter of which can vary between a one and five line staff, depending on what is being notated.

As a composer, it is imperative to know the treble and bass clef, especially if you are using the piano to compose and check over compositions. Here is are two charts that review some of the note names. Below the charts is a keyboard that you can cross-reference the notes with.

One more quick note (no pun intended): a sharp (#) raises a note by a semitone and a flat (b) lowers it by a semitone. Usually, sharps and flats are black notes, but they don't have to be (for example, Fb is actually E). Natural signs cancel accidentals (sharps and flats not contained in a key signature), as do barlines.

Two of the best ways to familiarize yourself with notes are to:

• write them down on manuscript paper;

• play them on the piano while saying them aloud.

Books that offer a review of notes and piano tutoring include:

• for small kids: Leap 1 Music: Mother Goose Songbook

• for beginner pianists of all ages: The Thompson Course

• for adults: Making Music at the Piano: Learning Strategies for Adult Students

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