Sheet Music: Every Good Boy Does Fine… I Think.

Sheet music is something that I have constantly bumped into. At the start, this form of musical notation was always there for me, but I never really had the courage to step up and embrace it fully. When I decided to teach myself piano, I eventually took the process of sheet music and held it closer to me. It was not an easy start for me though. I still constantly struggle with reading notes at an efficient pace today.

CDEFGAB. These are what make up the notes on the piano (of course with their sharps and flats). The way sheet music is organized is through notes on a staff. The staff is a set of 5 horizontal lines with 4 four spaces in between where notes are placed. In piano notation, there are usually two staves indicated by a treble clef and a bass clef. In my one of my previous posts about guitar connections, I briefly discussed that the treble clef of the piano signifies what you play with your right hand, and the bass clef of the piano tells you what to play with your left. The notes on the staff indicate what notes to play on the piano.

This was the standard of sheet music that I was taught way back when I was struggling with piano lessons; however, the real problem that emerged for me was identifying what notes went on what line and space with some degree of acuity. Thankfully, the treble clef was easier than the bass clef because of my past background in guitar which only uses the treble clef. The notes that go on the lines and spaces of the treble clef staff look like this:

The lines of the treble clef can be summed up in the mnemonic device of: Every Good Boy Does Fine. The spaces of the treble clef can be noted as: FACE. Like a person’s face in real life. (Haha, get it?… anyways, on to the next clef.)

The bass clef looks like this!

The lines of the bass clef can be summed up in a mnemonic device like: Good Bananas Don’t Fall Apart. The spaces for the bass clef don’t spell out a word so a mnemonic device like: All Cars Eat Gas can be used!

Of course, any mnemonic device can be used to memorize the notes on lines and spaces.  I just use these because they stick with me somewhat well. Personally, the bass clef was a lot harder for me to learn due to unfamiliarity (it still is *sighs*). Some of this still remains a little awkward for me when looking at sheet music, but with practice, I hope to improve. A lot of my friends who are amazing at music have helped me as well in order to expose me to their own musicality of through their own sheets. The more I’m exposed to, the more I learn. I hope this talk about reading sheet music has reached some people; let me know what you think as always.