Ready to Read Faster?

Today’s topic is about note reading and specifically how to read our piano notes faster than we are right now. This is important in our playing because it allows us to sight read easier, learn a new piece faster, and figure out chords and even rhythms easier.

Learning our notes is one of the first things that we learn when we start playing the piano. We learn how to read the notes in our music and then where they are on the keyboard.

We always start out slowly when we learn anything new on the piano…at least we’re supposed to. That’s the best way to securely learn what we’re working on. Later, we can play faster as we get more comfortable with where our notes are on the piano.
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If you need a review of general note reading for beginners, take a little time to go through these two videos so you’ll have everything refreshed in your mind and fingers before moving to this next step. 

• As we advance in our playing, we find that we need to be able read our notes faster because there are more of them and they are put together in more complex chord patterns and rhythms.

An important aspect of music theory comes into service here as we learn what an interval is and how we can read notes faster by looking at the intervals instead of each individual note.

• An interval is simply the distance between two notes – including both the bottom and top note. I show you examples of different kinds of intervals in music and on the keyboard in the following video and how to easily recognize each different interval.  

When we read individual notes in our piano music we tend to look at each one individually because they aren’t grouped together.

• When we see a chord in our music, we need to look at the group of notes all together instead of reading each individual note; because that takes too long especially when we have to play at a fast tempo.

Learning our intervals gives us a short cut in our note reading. When we move into more advanced playing, most of our music is going to have a lot of chords in it; either in one hand or sometimes both hands at the same time.
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• Think about when you first learned to read. You had to learn each letter of the alphabet first and then you learned how to make words out of those individual letters. Then you learned how to put those words together to make sentences, paragraphs and even stories.

It’s the same with note reading. The basic foundation is learning each individual note and where it is on the keyboard; in two different clefs!  We then learn to put those notes together to make a scale, and then learn how to play them non-consecutively – as in arpeggios.

Next comes chords which are just notes stacked on top of each other instead of spread out individually throughout each measure. We can have just one chord in each measure or we can have multiple chords in each measure; and they can be in one or both clefs.

• Getting through these chords as easily as you do your individual notes is easy if you learn your intervals and practice how to recognize them in your music. They are your key to speed reading any music that has chords in it once you have mastered this method.

Go slowly through this video and take time to learn your intervals. The surest way to do anything fast on the piano is to learn it …slowly.
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• If you find that you need additional help with intervals, make sure to check out the links posted in the video description for a few more tutorials that should cover any questions you may have. 

If you like my tips and lessons, you will love the courses over on my website. Whether you are a beginner looking to get a solid foundation to build on or you are looking to take you existing skills to that next level, the online music courses on my website - https://www.pianolessonsontheweb.com will help you do just that.