The 4 Stages of Learning to Read Sheet Music!

In this video I go through the four stages of learning to read sheet music. Many musicians believe that reading sheet music is just about reading notes on a page very quickly, when there is actually much more involved! In this video I go through all of the stages!

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[repetitivescrag]

I’m getting good at reading sheet music now. I’m starting to play pieces without looking at my hands and I’ve only been playing for a year and a half. I really enjoy reading sheet music

[akshatsoni]

Perfect video out there for me. I just started playing piano but was strugling a lot on understanding the scales and how chords help but you made it very clear. Thank you

[Mestrefugi]

That was so well explained! Reading sheet notes like we read entire words, it's really complicated in the beginning

[FrailSerenity]

Why am I paying a piano teacher weekly, when I can come here and learn more information in less time and have it actually make sense??

Thank you thank you thank you, Matthew, for all of the time and effort you put into your content. If it's saving me from giving up on an instrument I've wanted to play for decades we don't need to linger on the plural of decade), I'm sure it's saving others as well.

This really is such an underrated channel, and I can't wait for others to find it and get just as inspired.

[leNnard_]

Your channel is exactly what I needed. Ive always loved the piano, but other than playing off muscle memory I never really quite understood what music ACTUALLY is. I knew there is some underlying "language" that one has to learn, which then connects all the dots, and I believe you are teaching exactly that. Breaking down these abstract topics into different stages really exposes the fundamental concepts. This video, and the one about chords truly have changed how I approach my learning. It also motivates me to study music theory and learn how to play the piano properly, not just following tutorials. I really appreciate all your content.

Perhaps you could also make a video about transcribing music in the future? Ive seen a clip of frank tedesco recommending that transcribing music really helps to think about what you are playing. It is quite am ambitious task to start while still learning the basics, but I would appreciate your thoughts on it, and maybe how to go about learning to transcribe music as a tool for piano learning.

[deliseovpstudio]

@matticawood I've recently been getting your videos in my YT feed and greatly appreciate the effective & efficient presentations on your channel!!! I am a 30-year, veteran public school & private Music Teacher and find it a pleasure to see how you successfully "nutshell" so many music concepts.

I'm also, always one to be full of "suggestions" to tweak things to suit my style or to adjust things to fit the learning styles of my students.

One suggestion I have is with your visual/graphic of the Treble & Bass Clef notes: Would you consider
1) presenting the noteheads and letternames of the lines & spaces in two different colors
2) with the middle C being the two colors combined? (i.e. Treble = yellow, Bass = blue, Middle C = green)
3) As well as showing those two colors on the keyboard you display? And then
4) showing the Treble & Bass staves TOGETHER on the screen so that viewers can see the contrary motion that is made?

I ask this because missing the concept that the left hand is playing the music alphabet BACKWARDS - is the reason that people have such a hard time with coordinating their left hand WITH the right hand. Our human brains have to have time to grow more dentrites and synapses in our brain to be able to work with SIMULTANEOUSLY CONTRASTING CONCEPTS and then convert the concept into physical responses.

It's just a tweak! But, even without knowing it, your viewers will understand what you are so quickly touching on without even knowing that they "get it"! 😂 Thanks again for your hard work!!!

[exiledPostman]

My own way for remembering the Bass scale was "Good Boys Don't F*** Around"

[dimwitsadvocate]

Well, I watched the entire video for the first time. My head is swimming a bit, but I know enough to make sense out of this excellent video. But I'm going to have to watch it at least a few more times.

[deliseovpstudio]

6:52 @matticawood - I got very excited when you made the connection of seeing/reading music in PATTERNS and mentioned the Scale! But you also might want to squeeze in Unisons, Arpeggios and Neighboring Tones before the intro of Key signatures and scales.

[Gamerboy-hkmr]

Thank you I just started reading cheat music this video will definitely help

[firefern]

This is perfect for where I am in learning piano, keep it up!:)

[josephbahenda]

I already knew 37 symbols. Thanks for the insight

[missavocadoo]

I'm glad that I learned how to play the trumpet around 7 years ago so I can read notes 😅

[bojackhorseman]

thank you! this video greatly helped me among other yt videos. thanks a lot!

[dees]

Sometimes I think think I need to bookmark one of your videos because it’s useful.
Then I realise I just need to bookmark you! This is getting ridiculous…..you explain so clearly. I’ve been a musician of indifferent ability on various instruments for over forty years and I’ve seen a lot. You are genuinely one of the best educators and communicators I’ve seen. Well done.

The thing I’m struggling with going from single line instruments to piano……how do I know which notes go on which hands? Thinking of pieces such as Satie Gymnopodie. I couldn’t figure it out from the sheet music and had to resort to YouTube tutorials to discover that the left hand is all up in the right hand business. Not to mention I have an urtext edition so my chords are split over the staves, and when I started trying to look it up most other versions put the chords entirely in the treble clef….. so confusing. I’m sure it must be good for me though.

And then there are other pieces where the left jumps over the top to squirt in a cheeky extra high note…..how do I know to do that? And peddling instructions……It’s these piano specific things that are tripping me up now. Very disconcerting to have new information from something I thought I understood. Any chance of some suggestions, or a collab video with a single line playing friend where you can look at some differences? It would be really helpful to me if you could.

[Oakeybloke]

Nice video 🙂

I've just started reading grade 2 level, and use a mixture of landmark notes with stepping or skipping up and down. Will get to reading whole words soon...I hope!

[Soares-Rodrigo]

Another video to save and revisit from time to time!

[brianevans]

Great video thanks. I’d love to be better at sight reading and playing with meaning, rather than just correct notes.

[SLM]

Hi Matthew, how do I stop myself from cheating when sight reading? I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to sight reading. I am currently able to identify individual notes, although sometimes I do need a few seconds, but my problem is that when learning a piece by sight reading. After playing through it a couple of times I automatically memorise the notes and no longer actively read the sheet music. This is slowing down my progress. The only tip my teacher gives me is to ''just not do it, '' but it happens automatically. I don't know how to not do this. How do I fix this?

Also, whenever I look at my hands to place them on the correct keys, when looking back up, I cannot find where I am in the music, how do I fix this?

[isaacshaw]

Do you have any suggestions about books to get, I am around grade 3-5 in piano. I sight read in a brass band but that's just one line so I can sight read one line very easily but the more than one part can cause some issues so appreciate this video. Just a lot of the books my dad has are Grade 7-9 things that are really hard or just not in my skill range yet. I want to practice sight reading on slightly easier pieces than that. So wondering if you have any suggestions? thank you