Introduction to the musical staff
I’m starting a series of videos that provide a gentle introduction to learning piano. My hope is that anyone who wants to learn piano can do so, regardless of whether or not they’re ready to start formal lessons.
Here’s a video that teaches you about how the musical staff works. It’s good to learn how the staff works before you try to learn the notes!
See below for a brief overview of the video for people who prefer to read their content.
Summary
The staff is where we write our music for piano. The staff is made up of five lines. Each of these lines represents a different white key on the piano.
Line notes are notes that are centred perfectly in the middle of the line (so they’re easy to read). Since a staff has five lines, it can hold up to five different notes. Here’s a picture of what line notes look like.
But we can do more than just put notes on the lines! We can also use the spaces between the lines to write our notes. Space notes fit in between the lines, with the tops and bottoms of the notes touching the lines, not going through. Here’s a picture of the space notes.
When we arrange our notes in order from bottom to top, the order always goes line note, space note, line note, space note, all the way from one end of the staff to the other. Like this!
Why is it important for us to know the order of the notes? Because it helps us read music! If we know that the order of notes goes line, space, line, space, that means that if we see notes on our music that go from a line to the very next space, or from a space to the very next line, we know that those two notes are right beside each other on the piano.
This can really help us when we’re learning to read music, because if we can see that the note is moving to the very next note on the keyboard, we can just use our finger to find it! We don’t even need to know the letter name! Or, it can help us learn the letter name if we weren’t sure :)
I hope this was helpful! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about learning piano, and I can create a video for you. Take care!