How To Read Piano Music

Hello, my name's Matthew Forbes from the Music Workshop Company and I'm going to take you through how to tune some instruments, how to play them, basically, and also how to read the notated music for them. Piano music, classical piano music certainly, is notated as two lines at the same time, the Treble clef for the higher notes and the Bass clef for the lower notes in the left hand. Generally, they're split between the two but sometimes with your, the way you will play them with your hand, it will be, one will be reachable with the other but we'll get onto that as we go along.

The way it's written, the first thing you will see will be the key signature which will be either sharps or flats depending on the main note of the, on the key note of the tune. One sharp means that we're in G major, that's my main note of this particular song. It also means that most of the time, the composer is only using the notes in the G major scale.

Spot the F sharp, that's the key signature. Usually also you would see a time signature, most often 4/4 which is four crotches in a bar and that's what we have here. So as you will see, we've got multiple notes in both staffs, in fact, for this particular piece of notation, we've got two notes in each hand.

And the tune in this is the upper part of the upper line so if I play is on its own it comes out as *plays tune*. So start on the G, the second line up, using the F sharp adding to it the lower line on the right hand so the two lines in the right hand. The lower line, if I start with the very lowest, we have the bass line.

Again, because it's the bass clef that is the G in the top space, going down to the G in my key note on the bottom part of the staff with the two parts. And the hands together then with the four parts, two in the right two in the left it comes out as *plays music*. And that is how piano music is notated over the two lines simultaneously for however many parts the composer needs across both hands. .