Do I use “All Cows Eat Grass”?

I got a comment on my last video on naming landmark notes where a person shared the way that they learned notes in the treble and bass clefs, using the popular sayings like “All Cows Eat Grass”, “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge”, and so on. This made me realize that perhaps some of you wonder, do I use those sayings at all?

The answer is basically no! I don’t really like using those sayings in teaching people how to read music and I find I don’t even really need to! Here’s why.

If you’re going to use those kinds of sayings when you’re trying to read music, what happens is that you encounter a note, then you stop and you have to think, “Am I in the treble clef or the bass clef? Which saying do I use in this clef, is it Every Good Boy… or Good Boys Deserve…?” You actually have more to remember when you’re trying to name each individual note using a saying rather than just looking at the staff, orienting yourself to the staff, and then naming your notes from there.

(A side note that I didn’t get to expand on in the video: That stop while you figure out your notes is actually more disruptive than people think. It cuts the flow of your playing so that you can’t hear your melody anymore. It teaches you to think about notes in isolation rather than how they work together, which is crucial for song comprehension and retention. And honestly, it’s just so demotivating — you’ll spend 10 trying to figure out how to play a single line of music this way, and by the end of the line, you feel no more acquainted with the music or more successful as a musician! I know these sayings are popular but at a certain point I gotta ask, what’s the win here??)

I know this struggle from my own experience learning piano because it took me forever to learn how to read music (more on that another time). I got so frustrated because no matter how much I tried using All Cows Eat Grass and FACE and these sayings that were supposed to work for me, learning to read notes never got any easier. It wasn’t until I became a teacher myself that I finally figured out why it had been so hard. It was because by using these sayings, I was learning to identify one note at a time, in isolation, whereas in order to be a fluent and quick piano reader, I needed to be able to identify notes in relation to each other. That meant pulling back my scope a little and examining the staff as a whole, which the landmark system helps you to do!

Advanced piano players don’t really use these sayings when they’re reading new music. They’re using the relationship of the note to the staff to help them figure out where they are on the piano. (This is what helps them read notes that are many ledger lines above and below the staff where we don’t really have saying to help.)

And now as a piano teacher, I find that if I teach the landmark system first, my students almost never need to refer back to a saying to help them remember their note names. Only students who have already learned the All Cows Eat Grass sayings (in school or previous lessons) tend to default to that method.

Now with that said, I think it’s really great to have a number of options when you’re learning piano. So if you find the landmark system confusing, move right over to the sayings! But if you find the sayings not that helpful, or if you’re noticing you’re not really progressing in your music reading as much as you’d like, then maybe the landmark system would work better for you.

I’m really thankful to this commenter for sharing the system that worked for them, in an effort to help and uplift other piano learners. By sharing what we know, we can lift each other up! Take care!