Teaching oneself to play the piano is a very rewarding experience. Not only because you learn to play your favorite songs on the piano, but you also learn to read music, opening the door to other forms of music and the possibility of learning other instruments. Here I hope to show a very basic music lesson but I really hope it helps demystify music and piano.
Once you learn the formation of scales and chords, in addition to the general basic rules of music, you will find that this new knowledge can be transferred to other instruments. For example, once you know where middle C is on the piano and where middle C is on your sheet music, you can find it on a guitar, and from there you can work with all the other notes.
First of all, then, where is the middle C? I must assume that everyone has seen sheet music from a young age. On any sheet music, you will see five lines across the sheet with a wavy symbol on the left side. Below these lines, you will see another set of five lines with a not-so-wavy symbol on the left side.
For the moment we will call the upper symbol Treble clef and the lower symbol (pronounced base) Bass clef as in Bass. These symbols are important, as you’ll see later in your music lessons, but for now we’ll focus on the two sets of five lines and the spaces in between.
The two sets of five lines along with their respective symbols together are called a staff. A bit of history here; At some point in the distant past these two sets of five lines, the staff, were one. That is, they were joined by another line, making a total of eleven lines. In western music, with time and the interference of certain sectors, these lines separated into the two sets of five lines that we see now, and the line that joined them in the center disappeared.
This bit may confuse you a bit but believe me it’s important; the note that this represented disappearing middle line still exists, but we have to write it when we need it, also the two notes in the spaces on either side of this line. And guess what note this line represents? Yes, you guessed it, and it’s middle C.
So when you see a note below the top five lines or above the bottom five lines with a small horizontal line running through it, this is middle C. I think the reason for separating these two sets of lines was that the treble sometimes bumps into the bass and the bass sometimes bumps into the treble. So it would be pretty much unreadable if they were merged, thus treble and bass use the space between them to borrow notes from each other. You may have to read that explanation again to understand it.
All western music is denoted by the first seven letters of the English alphabet, A, B, C, D, E, F and G. If you draw the two sets of five lines yourself with a wide space between them, or better yet if you have an empty sheet of music, write in the middle C, like a squashed ball with a small horizontal line through it, and place it in the center of the space between the two sets of five lines. Now we can write the letter C next to it so we know it’s the middle C. Next, we’re going to write all the other notes in a diagonal line from bottom to top, starting from this middle C.
Looking at the seven notes in our set of seven and knowing the alphabet, we can write in the next note above middle C which is D. The next note will be on the bottom line of our set of five lines and it will be E. The next note will be in the space above line E and it will represent F, the next line G, the next space A, the next line B and so on up to the top line which you will find to be F.
Now that the sharp notes are on our sheet, we can go back from middle C and place the letter B in the space below it. Next we can start with the bass lines, put an A on the top bass line, then a G on the next space down and an F on the next line down and so on until we get to the bottom bass line that it will be G. You should now be able to read all the notes from the bottom bass line G to the top of the treble lines represented by F. You will see that each letter is used three times. This is your very basic notation in western music.