How to read piano sheet music: a beginner's guide to the staff

Reading music feels like cracking a code. It's a small code, though, and you only need a handful of rules to start using it.

The staff and the two clefs

Music sits on a staff: five lines with four spaces between them. Piano music uses two staves joined together.

• The top staff has a treble clef (the fancy swirl). It's usually the right hand, on the higher keys.
• The bottom staff has a bass clef (the backwards C with two dots). It's usually the left hand, on the lower keys.

Note names

Notes use the first seven letters of the alphabet, A to G, then start over. On the keyboard the black keys come in groups of two and three, and C is the white key just left of the group of two.

On the treble staff, the lines from the bottom are E, G, B, D, F ("Every Good Boy Does Fine", if you like a rhyme). The spaces spell F, A, C, E. Face.

Middle C

Middle C sits between the two staves, on a short line of its own (a ledger line): just under the treble staff, just over the bass staff. Find it near the middle of your piano and play it with your right thumb. Every other note is measured from there.

How long to hold a note

The shape of the note tells you how many beats to hold it:

• A filled circle with a stem (quarter note) lasts one beat.
• An open circle with a stem (half note) lasts two beats.
• An open circle with no stem (whole note) lasts four beats.

The two numbers at the start of the piece (the time signature) say how many beats are in each bar. 4/4 means four quarter-note beats to a bar.

A simple way to practise

1. Pick three notes and learn them well: C, D and E.
2. Look at a note on the staff, say its name out loud, find it on the keys, then play it.
3. Add two notes a week. Don't rush.

After a while the shapes stop looking like letters and start looking like places on the keyboard. That's the moment it clicks.