The  Book order form: RMN order form Read Music Now  $18.95 plus $4.00 Shipping & Handling ($5.00 in Canada) More than 60 pages of instructional text and music logically leading you step by step through the development of skills that enable you to read music. order the book here	Below are a few excerpts from the book Read Music Now Introduction If you can READ WORDS and TYPE,  then you already have the SKILLS you need begin to learn to read sheet music and play a piano or synthesizer. This book is for all who wanted to learn to read music and thought they couldn't - AND - for all who still want to learn to read music but don't yet know they CAN! This is NOT "another piano method" This is a common sense approach to  learning to read music. That means READ music - not  stumble around trying to figure out symbols. Here are the basics. You can expand beyond this as far as you wish. It is for kids. It is for adults.  It is for parents teaching their children. It is for private or classroom piano keyboard teachers. (teachers' note) It is for self-taught beginners, young or old. It is for friends teaching friends, whatever their ages or experiences.     Now also available on CD (PDF format) for only $10.95 plus shipping
What's covered? Table of Contents Getting Started.......................p. 1 White and Black keys Notes (sounds) and rests (silences) 5-line staff Flats Beats and Rhythm...................p. 5 Beats, durations and groups of beats Bar-lines and measures Counting and feeling beats Quarter-notes and quarter-rests Half-notes and half-rests Meter signatures (time signatures) Tie Dotted half-note/rest Eighth-note/rest Dotted quarter-note/rest Pitch, Melody and Chords........p. 17 Pitch, melody, noteheads and flats on a staff Note names Treble clef and bass clef Chords Combine Rhthm and Pitches....p. 25 Fingering: Left Hand and Right Hand Transposition Intervals: Half-Steps and Whole-Steps Repeats Both hands on one staff More About Rhythm.................p. 43 Sixteenth-notes/rests Triplets Natural Sign Meter signatures based on triplets Common time and Cut time More About Pitch.....................p. 53 Ledger lines Naturals and sharps Scales and Keys Key signatures	If you can READ WORDS and TYPE, then you already have the SKILLS you need begin to learn to read sheet music and play a piano or synthesizer. Just as we put alphabet letters together to make words, sentences and paragraphs,   we put notes and rests together to make rhythms, phrases and melodies.   Very simply, music notation LOOKS like it SOUNDS.   Your eyes see, your mind thinks, your fingers respond, and your ears hear the result.   With practice, these four "thought-actions" begin to occur as nearly ONE thought-action. You can become one of the 2.7% of the population who is able to read music well enough to play simple tunes and/or sing from common church hymnals and popular song folios. Reading sheet music is very easy. There are only a few symbols to learn and understand. So here we go! But first, you MUST have a piano or synthesizer by your computer, so...go get one.   Portable keyboards can be purchased from many music stores for little more than $100. Got one? OK, let us begin.

As you look at a piano, organ, synthesizer or accordian keyboard, you see a lot of white keys and black keys. There are really only 12 -- 5 black keys and 7 white keys. The rest are repeated just like the the group of 12 keys in the picture (left). Look at the black keys. Notice the group of 2 (left) and the group of 3 (right).  All of the 12 keys (notes) have  names. But we will learn those later.

As you look at the keyboard below, you can see that each 12-key group is identical. Each has 7 white keys and 5 black keys. The lower sounds are toward the left; the higher sounds are toward the right. Notice, again, the groups of 2 and 3 black keys.

Did you notice that the white keys do not all look alike? There are three different white key shapes.

This keyboard layout helps you see where your fingers go while you are learning to know the keys "by feel."

• Play up and down (going higher going lower) several times on the 5 black keys. Get to know what they sound like.
• Play up and down the 7 white keys. Listen carefully. Does the pattern have a different sound?
• Play up and down all 12 keys in the order they appear. Notice how that sounds different from either the black keys by themselves or the white by themselves. You are learning to really listen and hear.

The notation symbols in sheet music show you two things:

• 1. How  long or short the sounds and silences should be
• Sounds are shown by notes - 
• Silences are shown by rests - 

• 2. How high or low the sounds should be
• The highness or lowness of sounds is shown by placing the

note HEADS on a line or space of a five-line staff

• Of course, SILENCES are not high or low, so we don't show  that part

But, how do you know when to play the BLACK keys??

When the composer or songwriter wants a particular black key played, he/she will write a "flat" sign ON the line or space right in front of the note head.

When you see a flat in front of a note head, you don't play the white key shown by the line or space.
Instead, you play the black key just to the left of that white key.

Now you have a basic overview of how it works. You don't need to "really KNOW it" yet. The next sections will cover more detail and help it to all make sense. Furthermore, you will be READING  Music.

Next, you will learn about the two elements (long/short and high/low) separately.
Then put them together.

Begin now  with the Beats & Rhythm section.

1. No Sharps and natural symbols - only flats are used. This eliminates the early confusion of enharmonics, allowing the notation of all twelve notes to work more as  a "tablature." Every note that should be flat must have a flat sign in front of it. The "accidental through the measure" rule is reserved for later. Flats, rather than sharps, were chosen to allow for a better  "flat key diatonic" look.
Naturals and sharps are introduced later in the book.

2. No Key signatures - By using only accidentals,  transpositions and non-tonal materials can be introduced immediately at all 12 transposition levels.  This reinforces aural development and assists in keyboard familiarity.  Interval recognition and identification, at a later time, becomes a more natural outgrowth. Key signatures are briefly introduced later in the book.

3. Basic Meter Signatures - 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4. No "commom time", "cut time", 6/8 or 2/2 until  later in the book.

4. Two-Hand Unison -  Czerny knew that few things beat unison playing for developing both coordination and independence of hands and fingers. In this circumstance it also contributes visual reinforcement of pitches at different octaves.

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Looking for Keyboard music? Kenvad Music publishes several piano works for all levels. Visit the store and listen to mp3 clips

Like ambient electronic? Floating Galaxy CD by Ken Davies now available. Order now. Listen to mp3 clips at our Pattisan Records site.

 
 

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These contents Copyright © Kenneth W. Davies 1976 and 2001
Most of this material and the presentation sequence comes from previous material I published in 1976.