The key to building confidence in reading piano music

If you're interested in gaining more independence in reading piano music, there is one skill I recommend you focus on that will catapult you to the next level -- and that is learning how to read rhythm. Learning how to identify the rhythm of the notes you’re supposed to play is going to unlock your confidence in a way that you can’t imagine! Today, I’d like to explain why this skill is so important, why hard for beginners to approach, and what you can do to gain your first steps in rhythmic independence :)

Why is reading rhythm so difficult?

When people start learning to read music, usually the first thing they focus on most is that they’re playing the right notes. This is totally understandable because playing the right notes is necessary for us to actually sound like we’re playing music! But the challenge with reading music is that it involves both playing the right note and holding that note for the right duration of time, and it’s that last bit that people tend to struggle with.

Why is it so difficult?

There’s obviously a lot of work involved in even the “easier” step of reading the note names correctly. You have to learn the note names on the piano, you have to learn to identify notes on the musical staff, and then you have to make sure you’re playing the right key at the right time!

But I think there’s another element in play as well that makes reading duration of notes more difficult than reading the pitch of the notes.

When you’re reading the pitch of a note, there’s usually a tell. There’s usually some indication that you’ve played the wrong note: it sounds off, or it doesn’t match your expectation in some way. In this case, it’s comparatively easy to notice your mistake, correct yourself, and move on.

The same thing doesn’t really happen with rhythm. There often isn’t the same kind of rhythmic tell at first, especially because we all play our music music very slowly when we’re learning it. In fact, if you’re not totally confident figuring out what the rhythm is supposed to sound like before you start to play, there’s no easy way to tell you have the rhythm wrong unless someone else is there to point it out.

Many piano learners start their piano journey waiting for their piano teachers to point out their rhythm mistakes and never break out of this habit. The feeling that someone else is better suited to correct their rhythm follows them around, and is a barrier to their confidence that holds them back.

How can I get better at reading rhythm?

If you struggle to understand how rhythm works and want to learn how to read rhythm, there is a secret weapon to rhythm confidence that you likely already have in your home.

Are you ready?

It’s a pencil.

I’m not kidding. Your secret to learning how to read rhythm is to actually find the rhythm in the pieces you’re trying to learn, also known as writing in your counting.

Writing in the counting to the pieces you’re actually trying to learn is going to be more helpful to you than any flashcards or theory app or music game. These can be assists in learning your note values, but they will not compare to actually working with your music.

Once you have your counting written in, it can be very helpful to practice playing your music with an ear for the pulses within each measure (such as strong-weak-medium-weak for 4/4 time). Just try this with one hand at a time first, and then try hands together. With enough experience, you’ll start to anticipate the pulses before you even play them!

Once you’ve developed that anticipation, congratulations! You just developed your own rhythmic tell! Now you’ll be able to combine your ability to identify note duration with a felt sense of anticipation that you can use to self-correct!

And that, my friend, is what we call rhythmic independence. :)

Start small

If you’ve been playing for a while but reading rhythm is still a challenge for you, it’s likely that your ability to play piano exceeds your ability to read piano music independently. This means that your current music is likely technically advanced, and may include dotted quarter notes, eighth notes, and maybe even sixteenth notes.

If this is the case, it may be very difficult to count for all these partial beats. So don’t start there. You could just start by finding all the main beat groups within your music first (“All these notes belong to beat one, all these notes belong to beat two…”). You’ll start to notice which notes line up in your left and right hand (one really nice thing about formally published music is that the beats in the treble and bass clefs always line up!). You may even be able to piece together what the rest of the counting is supposed to be just starting with that foundation!

(If you’d like to see a video example of what I’m talking about, here’s a link to the video at the top of this page time-stamped at 3:18 where I demonstrate finding groups of beats.)

Alternatively, you could just go back to easier music to practice writing in your counting and strengthening your rhythmic tell by purposefully playing that song according to its pulses.

And if even playing easier music according to the beats feels too intimidating, start smaller than that! Just start with getting comfortable writing in your counting. It’s okay if this part of your journey starts as a paper-and-pencil exercise! Just start and take the win :)

Whichever method you choose, I do hope you’ll try! Facing rhythm might be scary, but if you’re brave enough to try, you may very well surprise yourself!

I hope this has helped make sense of rhythm for you and has encouraged you to give rhythm a try! If you have any questions about this, you’re invited to leave a comment on the original YouTube video.

Have fun!