Need help reading music

[oceanobsession]

Hi folks , ive been playing piano for 12 months , im trying to learn chopin nocturne op9 no1 ,  im on the
poly rhythm  11  and 22  , i thought if a black key was used there was a sharp sign before the note , or at the start , which is inline with the line or in between , but  the third note of the 11 is a c sharp black key , but
the sheet is saying its a d
This is how i write out a music sheet so i can play it  see attached ,  there just seems so many variables
with the music sheets  any help much appreciated . phil.

[lelle]

There are sharp signs (#) which in most cases tell you to play a black key. There are also flat signs (b) which function nearly the same way. The actual meaning of the signs is:

# - play the key closest to the right (most often a black key). C# means the black key closest to the right of C.
b - play the key closest to the left (most often a black key): Db means the black key closest to the left of D.

C# and Db ends up being the same key for this reason.

(And yes I say most often a black key, because if you got an E#, the closest key to the right ends up being a normal F. It might seem weird when you start out but there are very good reasons for why this system is used. Most often in beginner music you'll only have to deal with sharps and flats that result in a black key)

In your case you got 5 flats in the key signature (at the start). They should give you a clue what happens to the D in your sheet music.

[lostinidlewonder]

Sorry if I'm blunt, but you probably shouldn't be studying this level of music if you have not the concept of what a flat (b) is. I'm curious though how you decoded Db to be C# which is correct but it seems you might have just watched a video to tell you it was that note rather than interpreting the notation since it would have taken an extra step of understanding to write the alternative C# rather than the Db written in the score.

Writing the entire music out in letters on a seperate sheet is painfully inefficient, write it with the notes on the sheet if you must.

[oceanobsession]

Thanks for your help ,   yes i watched a video , not all music with letters is online , so im trying to read the
music sheet   i figured the poly rhythm  should follow the original music sheet , cheers again for your help and advice . phil.   

[lostinidlewonder]

Ok makes sense. How about draw lines connecting notes coming together on the sheet music and arrows showing how they play between (arrow up is left hand alone, arrow down is right hand alone and attach these to the actual notes). It will benefit you a lot if you keep your guides all on the page of the sheet music. With polyrythms the notes that come together should be the focal point. Often if you can play at these together points accurately the timing of the other notes can be somewhat felt and estimated and if you can play it while the notes are being evenly timed you'll get the polyrhtynms without observing every single note one by one which can feel dreadfully complicated.

[oceanobsession]

 Thanks again for your help , i tried to work out how many right hand notes fell in between the left hand notes , it plays well just need to get faster ,
What im still confused with is the fact that there is a b sharp  c sharp   and e sharp  in the left hand , and
b sharp  c sharp a sharp f sharp  e sharp  in the right hand , but the score  does not seem to tell you ,
i knew where the sharps were from watching a video , there is an online music sheet were you can say
letters , and it puts the sharps in a square box , where they should be in the score . thanks again phil.
 

[lelle]

Thanks again for your help , i tried to work out how many right hand notes fell in between the left hand notes , it plays well just need to get faster ,
What im still confused with is the fact that there is a b sharp  c sharp   and e sharp  in the left hand , and
b sharp  c sharp a sharp f sharp  e sharp  in the right hand , but the score  does not seem to tell you ,
i knew where the sharps were from watching a video , there is an online music sheet were you can say
letters , and it puts the sharps in a square box , where they should be in the score . thanks again phil.
 

Did you read my comment about sharps and flats? You have mostly flats in your score, only one sharp as far as I can see.

Also do yourself a favor and google what a "key signature" is!

[lostinidlewonder]

Thanks again for your help , i tried to work out how many right hand notes fell in between the left hand notes , it plays well just need to get faster ,
What im still confused with is the fact that there is a b sharp  c sharp   and e sharp  in the left hand , and
b sharp  c sharp a sharp f sharp  e sharp  in the right hand , but the score  does not seem to tell you ,
i knew where the sharps were from watching a video , there is an online music sheet were you can say
letters , and it puts the sharps in a square box , where they should be in the score . thanks again phil.
 

Where is this online sheet music where you can see the letters and it says sharps in the box? The piece has flats (b) not sharps (#). Are you not curious what the (b) symbol means?

[aaronsf]

In the sample you show us (the beginning of this nocturne), there are no sharped notes in the left hand.  There are a couple of natural signs, but no sharps.  Then you provided an image of...something.  What is it?  A handwritten page with bunches of sharped notes.  I don't understand.  The key is Bb minor.  No sharps in the key signature.  So every note that corresponds to a flatted note in the key signature must be flatted.  If the composer wants to alter a note flatted by the key signature, they have to introduce an "accidental" to alter the note either up or down from what the key signature dictates.

[quantum]

[...] i thought if a black key was used there was a sharp sign before the note , or at the start , which is inline with the line or in between [...]

This is how the concept might be taught to beginner music students, to introduce black keys along with sharps and flats.  However, it is a gross oversimplification, and can become problematic when looking at music beyond the realm designed for beginner students.  This piece is far from beginner, or even first year of piano for that matter.

Think of it like this:  every key physical key (white or black) on the piano has multiple names.  Which name gets used depends on key signature, accidental, or both.  We decide which name to use based on context. 

For example: the black key B-flat can have other names.  We can also call it A-sharp

Example 2.  The white key A can have other names.  We can also call it G-double sharp.  We can also call it B-double flat (as in measure 6 of op 9/1) 

Example 3.  Op 9/1 is in the key of B-flat minor, with five flats.  This is the context.  Accidentals are named in a way that is appropriate for this particular key.

While this music notation thing is new territory to yourself, don't get into the habit of thinking of black keys as sharps (although many people do call them that).  Think of them as black keys, which can be either sharp or flat. 

Can you tell us where you are getting all these sharp named notes from?

[player10]

Sorry to be blunt, … but if you’re just learning to read sheet music, you really ought to start with something easier than a Chopin Nocturne. Get yourself a book that teaches how to read music and play piano — maybe one of Alfred’s Adult Piano books — and work through it starting at the beginning.

[jonslaughter]

Sorry to be blunt, … but if you’re just learning to read sheet music, you really ought to start with something easier than a Chopin Nocturne. Get yourself a book that teaches how to read music and play piano — maybe one of Alfred’s Adult Piano books — and work through it starting at the beginning.

I agree with this. In fact, I made the most progress once I did this. When I started out I felt I was better than I was and always felt learning and listening to such easy pieces was both stupid and boring and that I was good enough to play more complex pieces. I was completely wrong and wasted a lot of time struggling through sheet music because I never built up the mental models required to properly read. I knew how to read sheet music and I even studied some of the notion books and used Sibelius quite often.

I eventually got tired of wasting my time and realized I just needed to work from the beginning. I knew I had some holes in my understanding somewhere so I had to start from the beginning and work through everything no matter how boring it was. What I found out is that it wasn't boring or stupid but really honing many skills.

There is a reason music is taught progressively... as is all things. It can be a hard lesson to learn and my guess is that many refuse to learn it which is why they eventually give up. It seems like a waste of time because it's "easy" but there is a difference between understanding it intellectually and having developed the internal representations required for real time performance. I'm still not great at sight reading but I'm about 100x faster and I make more progress on complex pieces when reading because I actually know what is going on rather than thinking I know.

If one cannot sight read the easy pieces how can one sight read the hard pieces? It's really not complicated but we humans tend to love to make things complicated. It's typically worse for an "adult" learning piano because it seems like using training wheels to learn to ride a bike. But it is the best way.

The easy pieces are really, in many ways, just leaving out notes, or better, slowing things down. One can think of a simple piece as just being a complex piece that is a quarter tempo(but played at tempo) in some sense. This isn't entirely true since more complex pieces are typically filled with scales and chords but one also should be studying those.

I don't think Alfred is particularly good but it is good in the sense that if one cannot play the pieces well then it shows there is something wrong. (so it is good in the sense of progressive study but not really great in thorough teaching)

For example, one of the bad habits I got into was to mentally treat every key as C(mainly because I studied a lot of theory before really learning to play) and I would mentally adjust sharps and flats as by transposing them into C. So keys with with a lot of sharps and flats always seemed difficult because my brain would always short circuit them to C in strange ways. B and Bm were always strange keys I couldn't wrap my head around. I could play the scales and chords more or less but in the heat of the moment I might confuse it with Bbm(since I used Bbm a lot in improvising even though it too was somewhat odd thinking about.). What is worse is that I would enharmonically transpose key signatures to the one I preferred so I would see A#m as Bbm generally since A#m was "odd" to me and this could cause problems when a piece might be in A#m as I would be constantly trying to "rewrite" it in Bbm. This came from learning too much theory early on because an emphasis was made that they are "enharmonic" and so I thought I could simplify it. This doesn't work when reading. In any case, I had to really go study the keys individually and force myself to get used to thinking of them as being different. I still have some problems with these issues but the are far less and I can more quickly correct any mental issues that pop up when dealing with them. For example, Db still causes me grief even though I use C# a lot in improvising(one of my favorite keys).

Point being is that there is a sort of right way to learn things and a wrong way and when we jump head we are setting ourself up for failure. I suppose it would be like paving a road. If we jumped ahead we would have huge holes("pot holes") and these holes will constantly cause us problems. The only way to do it right is go back from the start and go about it right. Even then there will be holes that form but they will be smaller and easier to fix.

[oceanobsession]

 ok the piece is in b minor ,  would that be the key signature , and is that why there are no sharps  , my fault
for saying sharps , its complicated and im trying to get my head around it , i thought the black key s  was a sharp , i also thought they were half notes , what im trying to find out is how do you know when to play a black key from looking at the music sheet  ,  this score puts the black keys played in a square , but im having trouble understanding when to play a black key from looking at the original , its something i dont understand , phil.

https://piadoor.com/en/piece/23/sheet_music/#doremi   

[brogers70]

I think you really should step back, get an adult beginner's piano method and work through it. It will teach you how to read sheet music, what the different keys are, how sharps and flats work, what the timing of different note values is. The Nocturne you are trying to learn is not easy for a beginner to read - the key signature, B flat minor, is not one of the first ones you learn, and there are plenty of complex rhythms, like the 11 against 6 you were looking at. I know it can be frustrating to go back to the simple stuff when you love an advanced piece, but you'll get to the music you love much faster if you force yourself not to take such drastic shortcuts.

[lostinidlewonder]

ok the piece is in b minor ,  would that be the key signature , and is that why there are no sharps  , my fault
for saying sharps , its complicated and im trying to get my head around it , i thought the black key s  was a sharp , i also thought they were half notes , what im trying to find out is how do you know when to play a black key from looking at the music sheet  ,  this score puts the black keys played in a square , but im having trouble understanding when to play a black key from looking at the original , its something i dont understand , phil.

https://piadoor.com/en/piece/23/sheet_music/#doremi

This link shows everything in flats, and doesn't explain how you chose C# in the left on your "cheat sheet" vs the Db. You might benefit from trying easier arrangements of the piece so you don't have so much to deal with.

[quantum]

ok the piece is in b minor ,  would that be the key signature [...]

The key is B-flat minor with a key signature of 5 flats.   B minor is a different key and has a key signature of 2 sharps.

The Key signature can inform you of the key (or mode, or tonal centre).  Oftentimes the key signature indicated directly reflects the key represented through sound, but this is not exclusive.   The key signature is not the definition of a key.  Do not rely on the key signature to tell you what key the music is in.

Key signature ≠ key, mode, tonal centre.

[...] i thought the black key s  was a sharp , i also thought they were half notes [...]

Black keys can be sharps.  However, black keys are not exclusively sharps.  Black keys can also be flats.    Every key on the piano (black or white) can have more than one name. 

Are you talking about semitones?  A semitone or half-tone refers to the distance or interval between two notes.  On the piano, the semitone is the smallest interval represented on the keyboard, it is the interval between any two adjacent keys on the piano. 

For example:
A# - B is a semitone
E - F is a semitone
C - D-flat is a semitone
A-flat to B-double-flat is a semitone

Semitones often involve naming a black key.  But one can also have semitones without black keys (above example E - F).  Semitones are distances between pitches, not black keys.

Semitone ≠ black key.

Instruments like the violin or human voice, can easily produce intervals smaller than a semitone.  That said, in western music the smallest interval commonly depicted in a score is a semitone. 


A half-note or minim is a note duration. 

half-note ≠ black key.

what im trying to find out is how do you know when to play a black key from looking at the music sheet  ,  this score puts the black keys played in a square , but im having trouble understanding when to play a black key from looking at the original , its something i dont understand , phil.

The notehead on the staff gives you the letter name of the note, and the  particular octave in which it is located.  The key signature gives you a sectional mapping of which notes are modified (If it says B-flat in the key signature, all letter name B notes are flat, unless you are given different instructions, or the instructions change through the course of the piece).  An accidental beside a notehead gives you a localized direction to modify a given note, it usually applies till the next accidental or next barline (whichever comes first). 

Take the time to learn how to read music notation, especially if you are interested in learning pieces such as this.  Resist the urge to take shortcuts. 


Can you explain how you produced your cheat sheet of notes named with sharps?

[oceanobsession]

I watch a video online , most popular classical pieces are online , i stop and start the video , using a piece of  A4 size paper   i fold it 4 times down the length   middle c  being in the centre , i walk the dog with a  retired
music teacher  so pick up a bit from him , you are probably right chopin nocture in b minor is to hard , well
parts of it are , like the poly rhythms , thanks again for your help and advice its much appreciated phil.   

[essence]

You mean you watch a video and watch what notes are played, then write it down? I think learning to read music would be less painful!

[oceanobsession]

Well i am trying to learn about how to read music , i was interested in playing summertime porgy and bess
i managed to find a faber and faber music score for it , ive got a sheet telling you where each note would be
on the piano scale wise  , i managed to write out about 8 pages in my style letters on paper ,of summertime and learnt to play it , if i had to look at a music sheet and play it  not really knowing instantly what im looking at , its hard enough playing the notes , someone who know what they are doing instantly knows what note and where it is , but for me its hard , but if i read a music sheet and write the letters on paper i can see whats in the right hand and whats in the left hand  instantly  , the more i have to look at a music sheet to get the letters are where they are on the piano the more i will understand where they are
hope ive explained things a bit , im retired now and play about about an hour a day , cheers phil.

[jonslaughter]

Well i am trying to learn about how to read music , i was interested in playing summertime porgy and bess
i managed to find a faber and faber music score for it , ive got a sheet telling you where each note would be
on the piano scale wise  , i managed to write out about 8 pages in my style letters on paper ,of summertime and learnt to play it , if i had to look at a music sheet and play it  not really knowing instantly what im looking at , its hard enough playing the notes , someone who know what they are doing instantly knows what note and where it is , but for me its hard , but if i read a music sheet and write the letters on paper i can see whats in the right hand and whats in the left hand  instantly  , the more i have to look at a music sheet to get the letters are where they are on the piano the more i will understand where they are
hope ive explained things a bit , im retired now and play about about an hour a day , cheers phil.

You should really take peoples advice and start with very simple material. I tried it your way and "wasted" 10 years of my life. Doing what you are doing is not necessarily wrong but it is very slow and inefficient starting at complex music. In some simple complex music is just slow music speed up very fast. So you are straining your brain too much. Your brain can only process so much information and when you throw too much at it then it completely breaks down..

If you are playing about an hour a day and you want to make serious progress so that you can at least feel like you've "learned piano" by the time you die, I suggest you do this: 1. Increase your time to 2 hours a day minimum. Try to do more. You don't have to do 2 or more hours every day. If, say, one day a week you can spend 5 hours playing piano and studying on top of 1 hour it will be a significant boost. If you think about it, one hour a day is just 5-7 hours a week. It is not much. It's far better than 15m as some have recommended to people(which is likely actually intentionally trying to get them to fail).

One of the failures of reading the notes is thinking that it is an isolated activity from sight reading(playing piano while reading). This is why starting with complex music is counter productive too.

You really need to start from some "adult learning books"(you can find them online for free) or just get simple music(simple means no complex harmonies, arpeggios, melodies, rhythms. All that just slows you down). Learning is progressive. You have to build on it.  In 2 years you can play piano at a level you never thought you could if you approach it correctly. It's not just progressive but holistic.


I will outline how to go about it. It's not necessarily the best way for you but it is a way. I can explain each thing in greater detail if necessary to convince you why it works this way so that you would do it.

1. Start with very simple adult books. It may seem boring, slow, etc but it is exactly what has to happen. You have to make sure you can do that material before you approach more difficult pieces. If you can't then you are spinning your wheels and wasting a lot of time. If you are just 10% efficient then basically it is going to take you 9x longer. Think of these books as a stress test. I made the most progress when I decided to go back through those books very slowly and make sure I knew everything and could play ever piece and fully understood everything.

Learning the notes is not memorization. You already know them that way. It is connecting the mind with the hands with the page. For example, when I learned theory I could simply notate an entire score but it was a "calculation" and I was unsure. It might take me a minute to notate a bar. Now I can just look at the notes and know. Why?

2. Learn your chords and scales. This is the material of music. There are several chords and scales book.  Such as the one with Alfred. Don't skimp on the reading part. You have to connect your eyes with the notes through your mind and body. My problem is, and likely a problem with most adults, is that we actually do learn quite fast in many ways. E.g., I knew that entire book by heart because it's basically two pages duplicated 24 times. What's the point? E.g., why not just give one page and say practice it in all keys? Because you have to train yours eyes to respond to what it see's on a page, not your your "mind". If you are going to learn to sight read then it is a different process than "understanding"(the theory side).

E.g., any good guitarist knows his chords. This doesn't mean he can play piano. "Knowing" and knowing are two different things.

Ultimately you should be looking at the score as chords, not notes. This is called "chunking" and it is one of the reasons music is the way it is(or brains work a specific way). E.g., when I see a melody I don't see a series of notes but a chord that the melody is outlining. This way I can instantly(or nearly so) recognize several notes. Furthermore, any changes then also stick out.  Then at some point even this level starts to meld into the background(but always present) and you start seeing phrases in terms of harmonies and every note just fits in it's place within a framework. It is not an intellectual process to get here. No matter how much theory you know or how many paper tests you can pass about notes you'll never get here without connecting these things to the music. In many ways it is the music that ties it all in together. Hence when you start with complex music you go so slow you never actually get to a meaningful level of learning. When you start simple your brain can process these things fast enough that it actually sticks and you make real progress.

3. Every exercise should be varied and experimented with. This helps build a "world" around each thing and solidify it. This is why it takes so much time and 1 hour isn't enough. For me, it takes about 1 hour just to get my brain to be ready to learn.

4. You are using the keyboard as a way to provide a 3rd leg to stand on. Without it you are going to fall over. What happens, basically, is that you are connecting a mechanical/physical act with the mind and the  score. There are 3 points. Else you are essentially trying to learn the notes in a meaningless abstraction. In fact, now that you know this you can add more legs to make a stronger foundation. Sing the notes, sing the notes with the piano, maybe even get another instrument and learn them on it. Connect them all to the score.

E.g., you connect the A note in the score, with the A note in the piano with the A note in your mind. Each one is a complex process but each one helps the other "fit". You don't even really think of A, at least after you reach some level, but in terms of chords, intervals, degrees but it all fits. It's not something really explainable. If it were then we could just learn it by someone telling us. I'm trying to explain it but that is my way. Others will have different explanations and, in fact, I'm going to make a thread about it.

Basically as you learn you are going through a very complex series of processes and each step builds off the other. The "simpler" things become "cogs" in the larger process and then that larger process eventually shrinks to become a cog in an even larger process. (this is the process of abstraction) The difference with this and a pure intellectual process(which some people try to make it, specially beginning adults) is that most of these processes are mostly physical. You have to connect the physics of it. I think this is why most adults fail at learning music. They want it to be intellectual and it mostly isn't. It requires connecting the body to the process and this takes time to do this and a lot of attention and focus. You have to approach it like a kid would. You have to sort of become a kid. But that is nearly impossible for adults, they have too much "baggage".  But the more you can get the child like mentality(that you do know about but which is covered with decades of "life experiences") the easier it becomes. You are not worried about tomorrow, you are not stressing about bills, you find vast interest in simple things(because you do not know what complexity really is), etc. In some ways being retired makes this a little easier but also a little harder. If you can get the right frame of mind then, technically/in theory, you should progress faster than a child because you have all the life experiences to build off of but also those are the same that bog you down.

Try not to study things in isolation. In some ways learning music is a "group activity". By group I do not mean of people(although that can help a lot, mainly with motivation and sharing knowledge) but of learning many different aspects simultaneously.

The single most important thing in music is doing music. Many people have learned music very well simply by playing all the time. This isn't technically the fastest but it can be quite solid after some time because one is developing their own internal language to understand things. It can cause problems too but one can learn music by simply playing. By supplementing that process with other musical activities and learning some theory one can speed it up tremendously and make it more universal and robust.

[oceanobsession]

Thanks for your help and advice john ,  i dont just play one tune ive lots of different ones some i can play
at the right speed and all the way through   Gnossienne no. 1 and  gymnopedie no 1  and 3 by erik satie
im half way through air on a g string siloti  at the correct speed  canon pachelbel  at the correct speed
debussy girl with the flaxon hair  half way through struggling a bit midway , chopin waltz in b minor at correct speed
half way through that , i am improving  but yes the nocturne in b minor  gets hard once you hit the poly rhythm i struggle with the trills in the other nocturnes  , as long as the piece is slowish i can eventually play it ,   its speed that im having trouble with , but i do take your point , the only book ive got was from a charity  shop piano lessons book two  , i shall have a read , what type of thing would you suggest playing
phil.

[jonslaughter]

Go here and search for piano books: https://z-lib.fm

Any piece, no matter how complex, can be slowed down enough to make it simple to play. So if a piece is hard you slow it down as slow as needed to play it. You can also take it measure by measure, beat by beat, or note by note if necessary.

But generally speaking those issues you are talking about are solved within the contests of small "test"/"exercise"/"simple" pieces. When you try to do them in complex pieces but have issues everything sorta grinds to a halt. It  doesn't become fun but a druge.

There are always things that any piano player will, come across that they are weak on. The way to solve these problems is take them out of context and work on them individually and isolated and slow and built up until you get a feel for it and then try to do it in context... if it is too hard then you figure it out.

E.g., part of figuring it out is doing it enough and realizing there is a certain way you have to learn to figure it out.

Are you playing with a metronome? If not that might be your problem there. Take the songs you know well and play them to a metronome. This can be problem if there is a tempo changes or time signature changes in some ways so maybe pick a piece that is pretty straight forward meter and time wise that you know. (you can overcome this by having a programmable metronome but likely you don't)

Then just set the metronome at a tempo where you can "play to it". You should be able to play nearly perfectly in time. If not slow it down a little.  If you slow it down too much you might find it is harder. Your goal is to play along with the metronome. If you don't exactly know what that means I can go into more detail but basically it works this way:

I'll go ahead and walk you through it with gymnopedie no 1 since you say you know it.

The key is D, it's in 3/4, the tempo is irrelevant. [note that the key signature doesn't always mean what one things but typically it's suppose to tell us something about the chords and accidentals used] Of course note the dynamics, it's soft, but we will leave that out for now too.

D means that you have two sharps(you have to memorize this by learning the cycle of fifths key signatures). F# and C#. You also know this by knowing your theory about key relationships. C# is the leading tone to the D, the tonic. the F# is the maj 3rd of D and it is the leading tone of the G, the IV chord of D as it comes from the key a 5th below.

What all this means is that the chords you are going to use, mainly, are those diatonic to D which are D, Em, F#m G A Bm  and C#dim. These are called the "diatonic chords" because they don't use any "chromatics". You should be able to play these chords in their triadic patterns and inversions. These are very simple to play but you have to be very comfortable with them.

So you need to set a metronome to 3/4.What this means is that it should be tick tock tock(so you really want a digital metronome which you can get free). The accented tick corresponds to the first note after every bar line(this is called the down beat).

The first bar is a Gmaj7 chord. Why? Because the LH is a dotted half note on G. A dotted half means it lasts for 3 quarter notes. The quarter note "gets the beat". this means that it lasts as long as one "metronome tick(or tock). The RH plays a Bm chord(the vi chord). That is, even though we are playing in the key of D we are starting on the G chord, the IV chord. We can make a quick scan of the music and see there are no accidentals until later so either this piece is  in G Lydian(a mode of D) or in D or possibly Bm). This really doesn't matter but helps us narrow down how the piece may feel and it is something we just know from theory and we can see at a glance without much effort.

One also notes basic pattern being used here. It is very simple. Once you can play the first bar rhythmically and in time then almost the entire piece is doing that + a melody which we can also visually see is quite simple.

Ok, so set your metronome. Rather than tick tock tock we will say 1 2 3 | 1 2 3 | 1 2 3 | until the piece ends or changes meter.

The first 4 bars are Gmaj7 Dmaj7. Note that it repeats, you should be able to look at bars 1 and 3 and 2 and 4 and see they seem to be identical). So this cuts down on the work. If we can play bars 1 and 2 then we just repeat it. What this does is give you time to look ahead and see what is coming unless you struggle because it's too hard.


Your metronome should be

1 2 3 | 1 2 3 | 1 2 3 | 1 2 3 | 1 2 3 | ad nausea.

Those bass notes all by themselves at the bottom are always start on the one and they last for three beats/clicks(this is what the dotted  quarter means = 3 quarters, a quarter is one beat, that is what the 4 in the 3/4 (for simple time sigs) tells us).

The upper part(in this case it is in the right hand) are just chords. Bm then comes F#m in first inversion, then Bm and F#m in 1st inversion again(as we already saw, it repeats).

So playing to the metronome(which is what all this is about in the first place), looks sorta like this:


RH:     Bm  - |     F#m -   |
LH: G   -   - | D   -   -   | repeat once more.
C : 1   2   3 | 1   2   3   |


Good news is that you already know how to do this. You just have to play it with the metronome so that when you hear the tick you get those low notes right on the sound of it and the first tock(2nd beat) you play the chords(you already know). It should be in time, as if you are playing "patty cake" with the metronome. The metronome is your friend. If you play in perfect time you wouldn't even hear the metronome. If you hear a click sound a  little after you play or a little before you play then you are "out of time". If you play so out of time it makes no sense then you need to figure out exactly what it means(I'm sure there are videos on line that will demonstrate these things).

Now, in fact, the next 4 bars are EXACTLY what you did in the first 4 EXCEPT that you have to do all that with just the LH so the RH is free to play the melody.


RH      F#  A | G   F#  C#    B   C#  D | A   -   -   |
LH:     Bm  - |     F#m -   |     Bm  - |     F#m -   | 
LH: G   -   - | D   -   -   | G   -   - | D   -   -   | 
C : 1   2   3 | 1   2   3   | 1   2   3 | 1   2   3   | 


Now, you so already know how to play all this. So it is all about synching up with the metronome.  You likely can already do this ok unless your timing is bad or you never learned to play with a metronome or other people. A little practice should help you figure it out.

NOW, this is where the metronome comes in to save the day: SPEED IT UP! The metronome lets you control the speed in a regulated way. You can find the tempo you can play at perfectly then you speed it up a little. Then a little more. You are trying to train yourself to play faster and faster. This helps you build stamina, endurance, timing(it gets harder since you have more stuff to juggle in less time).

What it does is train your mind to sort of put things on auto pilot. This helps you focus on other things.

Now, once you can do this and play to a metronome. You can use the metronome to practice difficult parts, figures, etc.

E.g., suppose you are playing some thing like 3 against 4 where the LH has to play 3 notes(a triplet) against 4 notes). You then put on your metronome "tick tick tick tick" and you get your LH playing triplets and you try to play 16th notes on top. You can slow it down until you get the correct feel(it's a certain type of rhythm which is based on a sextuplet). But with the metronome you can dial it so you know exactly how to do it and can practice in a loop over and over until you get it.

If you are having trouble with trills or anything. Use a metronome to help control what you are doing and to make sure you are doing things correct. Then speed it up as slowly as you need until you get it. The metronome is somewhat magical because it helps "lubricate" our brain. We have internal clocks and so having it synched up helps organize everything more naturally. E.g, digital computers have internal clocks that synchronize every aspect of the machine. Clocks are natural. The metronome is just a type of "clock" but one that helps us focus on things. E.g.,  you can use it to help you sight read to by forcing you to go at a steady pace. This helps you internalize reading the notes.

Note that when we read music we typically are not reading like I've shown. I do not read each note of those chords. I read the root note and the "shape". In this case it is a root position triad. I know then that I only have to read 1 note, the bottom, to know the chord. It's a B, we are in D, so this makes it a minor chord. So the calculation isn't reading 3 notes but 1 note + the shape + the key. This seems like it is 3 things too but it is not. It's more like 1 thing because it's nearly instant and it connects to how to think about the keyboard(e.g. hand shapes). The D chord is read similarly. I see the D at the bottom(the 1st ledger line is E), I know that a chord symbol below the first line is a D. The chord in the top stave is a 1st inversion. I recognize it immediately because I've seen it likely a million times(not that specific one, but I've seen that shape all over the place. This is because most music is based on chords).

For the melody, I'm not thinking F# A G F# C# B C# D A. Although I can, as I just showed. I'm thinking ok, we are starting on F#, then it leads up a 3rd, that is, I skip a tone. I know how to do this on the keyboard because I know the Dmaj scale. Then it proceeds "scale wise" down then leaps down a 4th. I know how then down scale wise and up scale wise. Again, I'm not really thinking about it that way, it's just more like "up down down down down up up down) and the gaps basically tell me how much. I know how much because I've practiced my scales and basic melodies with sight reading. The "the simple stuff" has helped me learn that "That's a P4 gap" or "That's an Octave". You learn to recognize it. There are all kinds of little rules that exist but one doesn't think about those consciously but one needs to know them. All those little rules or tricks give one a quicker way to recognize what is going on. E.g., a 3rd, such as the 1st two melody notes, is a 3rd because they are on the same lines. I also know tricks like, (assuming C) Fmaj7 are all the spaces and Emin7 are all the lines.

But the more you practice the more all those things recede into the depths of the subconscious but you have to do simple stuff to get it. If you overload your brain(something I thought was good when I was young) you end up wasting a lot of time in the long run. Always start as complex as you need to do it "perfectly". I'm not saying it is easy but I'm saying don't make it any harder than it has to be or you will start to be counter productive.

Everyone has their own way to some degree. Also, what I'm explaining is not really how I think about it now. That is how I thought about it when I was studying sight reading. Sometimes I still go back to thinking about it that way but now I think more in terms of musical ideas and patterns and chords. E.g., it seems if I just know the chord that all the details  get sucked into it. Sorta like how we use words. We don't really have to think about spelling out words when we read them or recall their meaning. We just do it. The word, the spelling, and the meaning all become the same but the word represents all that stuff(it's like a shortcut). So a C chord means many things to me and any part of music that uses a C chord will just be a C chord and, for the most part, no matter what it's doing my brain just see's it as a C chord and the specifics are automatic. This isn't always true and specially when the music is very strange to me then I have to revert back to more basic understanding.

I don't know if other people sight read this way or not. Others could chime in with their own versions and ways of of doing it. I'm not saying my way is the best. I started with theory and calculation and so my brain resolves everything that way. Likely people that started differently will resolve it in other ways. It would be interesting to hear how other people experience reading. I imagine people that approached it more musically such as connecting it to singing will associate the notes and chords in that way.


[Note I also left out thinking about articulations, dynamics, fingering, etc. All these are also being thought about every instant but much of it recedes into the background over time(experience)]

[oceanobsession]

Thanks very much for taking the time to write all this information down , i was not sure what a measure was
but its from the start, to the line vertical,  and you have  g  and  b d f sharp , so basically you have 1and 2and3 to play the g in the left and bdf sharp in the right , now this is 3 swings on the metronome , im using
metronome on my android phone ,  i have put 3 beats/bar  1 clicks/beat  , but you can adjust the speed i have it set at 40 what is correct for 3/4 , im using the sustain peddle clearing on the g and d  you have to grab these quick with the key otherwise you can hear it alter the sound ,     
Apparently 69bpm is the speed for the piece , and the metronome would swing 3 times to play
the g left hand and triad bdf sharp in the right hand , so i need to speed up a bit , will practice with this now , cheers again for your help phil.

[jonslaughter]

Thanks very much for taking the time to write all this information down , i was not sure what a measure was
but its from the start, to the line vertical,  and you have  g  and  b d f sharp , so basically you have 1and 2and3 to play the g in the left and bdf sharp in the right , now this is 3 swings on the metronome , im using
metronome on my android phone ,  i have put 3 beats/bar  1 clicks/beat  , but you can adjust the speed i have it set at 40 what is correct for 3/4 , im using the sustain peddle clearing on the g and d  you have to grab these quick with the key otherwise you can hear it alter the sound ,     
Apparently 69bpm is the speed for the piece , and the metronome would swing 3 times to play
the g left hand and triad bdf sharp in the right hand , so i need to speed up a bit , will practice with this now , cheers again for your help phil.

The tempo doesn't really matter. It's just the speed of the clicks and you should set it to a tempo at which you can play comfortably to the clicks. If it's too slow likely you will not be able to anticipate the clicks well unless you count and or have good timing. Depends on the piece. In this case it means you need to memorize the piece better so you have less to focus on.

Law: If you can't play it slow you can't play it fast. Not totally true as sometimes playing it fast lets "autopilot" take over. But you should treat it as a law because it's far better. Many times the temp is written in some "abstract" notation such as Largo, allegro, allegretto, vivace, etc(the metronome shows you the names so you can use that). These typically have no exact tempo because generally it's about feel. Basically slow, medium fast and some shades inbetween

So don't worry about tempo at this point. Once you get the hang of using a metronome you will get a better feel for it.


If we are talking about The gymnopedie piece then it's in 3/4. So your beats per bar is correct.

The "clicks per beat" is called the subdivisions. For this piece there are not any subdivisions. (there are no 8th notes). Generally speaking when the piece is slower you might want to add subdivisions to help keep you on track and for fast things you remove beats. The entire point of a metronome is simply to have a clock tell you what "perfect time" is. It's a tool. Technically you can have 1 click per bar or even 1 click ever 4 bars or even non-standard stuff.


You can try to clap to the clicks to see if you can clap right on the beat/click. If you have a sharp loud sound that is very dry(no reverb/sustain/echo) then if you are nearly right on top of the click you won't even hear it and that is how you know you are accurate.

You should spend a few minutes a day, at least, playing around with the metronome. Look online for various exercise, etc. Using a metronome is how you learn what rhythm is. Without it you likely won't know unless you were "born with it". This is because the clock is the reference which everything goes to. You are not thinking of "ok, I play a little before the beat" to play a 16th note. A 16th note is a very precise temporal relationship to the beat. If you don't get it down then you might be playing some other rhythm and it changes the feel. It happens to feel a certain way and with practice you learn that feeling. Over time it becomes innate and you don't even think about it.

So, pick a tempo that is comfortable for you. Initially don't worry about the pedal(either hold it down or leave it up, whatever works best for you). Don't worry about playing it musically. Just worry about hitting those notes on the clicks.

The notation, the note and the notehead and flag tell us where to start the note relative to the clock and how long it lasts. It's basically a tape measure but for time. But at first you're primary goal is to make sure you can play on the clicks or close enough. I have no idea if you can do this or not or how well, I guess you could record it and upload it then I might now how well you do it but I'm assuming the worst to try to explain it in as much detail as you need so you can get it.

you also might want to count along wtih the metronome: You say One Two Three as it does Click Click Click. Or it might accent the first like CLICK click click CLICK click click). So it is like ONE two three ONE two three. You repeat that. Each "ONE" is starting a new bar(the bar line, the vertical line) ends the previous bar and starts the next bar.

So the piece start like ONE + G, then TWO + B D F#, then THREE(you are holding the other notes or using the pedal to sustain them because they are quarter and dotted quarter notes). (so yes, you are right. What you call a "swing" is a beat that has no notes being played on it but they are being sustained into it. Else there would be a rest there(there is a rest at the start on the RH, it's a quarter note rest, that is what it is called) It means "Don't play anything here, no sound. There is sound from the LH the low G. He doesn't want the sound from the previous chords to sustain over the bar line. He could if he wanted, he would use ties to do it, like he does for those long F# notes starting at bar 9... which is kinda useless on piano at that tempo since you won't hear the note last that long except for sympathetic vibrations or if it is played on an instrument which can sustain it.

For the most part the entire piece is almost that simple. You have to do some leaping with the bass note and the upper triadic notes. That is likely the hardest part about this piece because it has to be accurate. A metronome clicking away slow enough that you just play it over and over until you get it.

You said you can play it so it's really about "synching up" to the clock. Once you can do that and practice it for a few weeks or so you will see a big difference as you will start to "see" things at a deeper level. It might take months for it to sink in but if you can get to the point you can play a piece to a metronome well and play them 100+ times or so you will notice a big difference in how you think about it. You should try with and without the score when you do this.



In any case, your goal is to figure out(ultimately your job/practice) to be able to play to the click. There are   videos, I'm sure, on youtube all about this kinda stuff. Might be worth while to watch it. Once you can do that then you can slow things down enough to play through them, as long as they are not too hard, to be able to read and figure out what you need to to play them by sight.  You should really get even simpler pieces, maybe a single line LH and RH and try to sight read them slowly. This is how you practice to learn to sight read(well, one thing among many).

E.g., I looked for simple pieces like: https://pianocoda.com/turk/cradle-song/

This is the kind of stuff you should be able to do very easily before you tackle harder stuff like Chopin. If you can't do this stuff easy(sight read it relatively fast both hands) then you are wasting a lot of type with Chopin.

If you can't sight read that at fast tempo then slow it down. Try one hand at a time. If you can do it one at a time fast without issue then you should slow down and work to do both hands together too. (both skills are required)

You need to find pieces "at your level" and work on them. That is the "optimal" way to learn. Because you are learning real music without getting bogged down. You may think it will take longer to get to Chopin but you will get to Chopin and actually be able to learn him much faster than you do now. Many of the Chopin pieces are an order of magnitude harder than the gymnopedie's if not two. There is a ton more complexity involved. It's a lot of stuff that you are not aware of but you will learn if you build up.

Not only that, you are learning skills that will apply to all pieces of music. E.g., you could spend the next 2 years trying to play a single Chopin piece. You will learn something. Or you can spend the next 2 years developing your skill set properly using progressive learning and then learn a single Chopin piece in a few weeks to months(depending on the piece) But you will learn so many more skills that you can also learn other pieces just as easy. The reason is that the Chopin piece is just one very narrow subset such as a single key(or two), certain types of rhythms, a certain specific musical structure, etc. So you are not getting a big picture about how music works. When you do a bunch of easier things you are getting a vast overview. A complex piece, in many ways is just a simple piece that has been "complexified" to make it interesting and longer which makes technically challenging.

If you want to learn a Chopin piece, try the Em prelude Op28 No4. It's pretty simple except it has a difficult part. But the point of the etude is to sorta do this. Put something difficult in a simple setting. It's to give the student something challenging while not overwhelming them. It's one hurdle. A hard piece may have 10 or 100 of these hurdles. (it depends since the more one learns the easier hurdles become)

[oceanobsession]

Busy day today , but had a go with the metronome , and what i thought was upto speed is slow , i can play
gymnopadie no1 at the correct speed but make mistakes it seems so fast when you play it but when i record it its slow , so is it best to slowly increase speed trying not to make mistakes , i do recognise the chopin piece that you suggested so i will give it a go at some point , thanks again for your suggestions phil.

[jonslaughter]

Busy day today , but had a go with the metronome , and what i thought was upto speed is slow , i can play
gymnopadie no1 at the correct speed but make mistakes it seems so fast when you play it but when i record it its slow , so is it best to slowly increase speed trying not to make mistakes , i do recognise the chopin piece that you suggested so i will give it a go at some point , thanks again for your suggestions phil.

It's ok to make mistakes but you want them to be "controlled". What this means is that you can play it "perfectly" about 90% to 95% at the fast tempo you can(because if you play slower in theory your accuracy should improve). Then when you repeat the song you are focusing on those mistakes(since you know what you know). now, ideally you would play it at 100% accuracy but that might be impossible because the tempo is so slow. You have to learn to "feel" what that means and that is from experience of learning a lot of pieces and how your mind and body work.

E.g., suppose there is a part where you "trip up" for some reason but it is relatively minor. It is sorta like a "glitch" you make for some reason but you do know how to do it and sometimes do it right or can do it right out of context. Then in your mind you are to focus on that area. You know when it is coming up. Mark it in your score if you are reading along. Use whatever you can to remind you that you need to pay full attention at that mistakes. If you have to slow down when you are approaching. This is not a great thing unless you practice to a metronome a lot after the piece. A lot of people practice this way, they slow the tempo down to improve accuracy(recall, technique, etc) but then it becomes habitual and part of the music. By using a metronome you then can smooth out those but many do not use metronomes.

But once you get a feel for what I'm saying it will all be obvious.  Well, it becomes more obvious as you do it.

Just remember, you are not trying to be superman. Your goal is to reach a point where it works. So if you have to go slow to do it then it is best. Only go as fast as you need to do it right. You can accept a few mistakes here and there. Sometimes you can accept a lot, it depends but ideally there would be 0.  My method allows for a lot of mistakes. I might make 20% mistakes on my first read. I do this only to get a feel for the piece. It's basically like skimming. It's basically to help grease the cogs. My brain works better when I have the basic gist of how the piece works. i also like to go from the start to the end because I feel like I know it then rather than being oblivious about some parts. So my method is more like skim reading a book before I read it much slower. The 2nd time I go about it's like 10% mistakes. Then 5% 3rd time, then 2.5% 4th time. Of course all this depends on the piece as some will be worse and others easier. At this point I basically know the difficult parts that are causing me problems and I can "spot fix" anything that is difficult. I then usually spot fix until I can do it perfectly without issues and then try to insert them into the piece. This doesn't necessarily work perfectly because I learned those difficult parts out of context so I have to glue them back in.

Practice makes perfect. Remember this though: What you are doing is not the approach you will always use. It gets progressively faster and you require less and less effort. You are doing the "homework" now and it will pay off later.

Repetition Repetition Repetition. Same way how bodybuilders get in shape, same way how construction workers build buildings, etc.

[oceanobsession]

Thanks again for your advice , im practising with the metronome now and seem to be getting faster time
will tell phil.