Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Few Things :)

Hi all

(This is my first post)

Thanks for approving me

So I've been playing a little piano for a few years (I can play quite a few chords, the entirety of The Scientist & a few other songs)

I don't & cant really read sheet music. I've played the guitar from I was 7 (now 26). I'm at an advanced level with guitar and been lucky to travel around the globe with music (singing & guitar) and supported big bands and singers.

Basically I'm wondering how many of you play piano by reading sheet music and if you feel it is a necessity to be able to say you 'play' piano? I'm looking at getting the Yamaha P45 soon and have seen you can get the 125 for a little more however I'm pretty happy with the P45.

I think I am reasonably quick at picking things up. Learnt the intro to Your Song by Elton the the other morning in about 30 mins to be able to play it fluently. I learnt this by a YouTube video (rewind and repeat etc). What do yous think of learning via YouTube for piano?

Any advice is greatly appreciated! I think this time round I am completely ready to give it a really good go and commit to it completely.

Side note - my other half (we don't live together but im there most weekends) has a Roland FP30X and has done all piano grades etc

Hi Ethan
Welcome to PW! IMO, thd most flexibility is to both play by ear as well as learn to read music— but otherwise, think about how you want to play and what you want to play. Want to play classical? Not learning to read music will hold you back.

Do you ever see a score snd think ‘I wish I could read that’ , then learn to read.
If you want to play pop, and have no desire to read from a score, then work on improving your ear

No one, but you, csn really make this decision for you. It is all good— based on your personal goals 😊

Thanks!

I can learn music pretty well by ear (going by guitar anyway and can play along on piano if reading the chords.)

I've no proper interest in playing classical however I do look at sheet music and think often I wish could read that so maybe you're right.

I think I will continue to learn sheet -. I understand the notes on sheet music it's just playing and reading it at the same time - all comes down to practice of course. It can just be frustrating currently as can play better without reading and just playing from memory?

Thanks!

If you decide you want to read music, I would recommend getting a method book, such as Faber. It is not a quick process to learn to read the notes and rhythm, and then play both hands together well.

You can always start, and then change your mind. If you can do both— that would be awesome!

I like what dogperson wrote. I would add, since you mention the difficulty of reading the music while playing at the same time, that I have great trouble doing exactly that, so I memorize the material I want to play. I can keep going for more than an hour playing from memory, so that path is viable. But you'll find many here who vigorously advocate playing while reading the music. I believe we tend to fall naturally into one camp, or the other. But either way is good.

And then of course there are people who generally don't bother much with playing the music of others; they compose their own. That's good too.

One thing is for sure, you will get lots of advice from the different camps - play by ear, read music, or learn from videos.

If you want to play classical - learn to read music.
If you are a natural musician like our buddy and PW member Rick - play by ear.
If you don't care about classical and can learn from a video - then do that.

Personally I would learn to read music...

Sam

Thanks! In two minds what to do really! I play guitar solely by ear now but of course the first years of that I had to look up the chords etc for it - maybe that's my answer in itself

Question,

Can someone recommend me a genuinely good website to learn from? I work at a computer 5 days a week (bare in mind I don't have a piano in work lol)

But I feel I could really spend some free time in work learning more.

I know there are absolutely limitless websites and apps I could sign up & start paying for but I'd imagine you all here have a better idea

First, welcome to PW!

Now, to the part of your post that I quoted here. I think learning from YT videos like that is incredibly inefficient. If you can learn to read sheet music, even if you can't play *while* reading, it will be much more efficient, and you'll be able to learn more complex music faster.

Separate from that, you definitely want to learn the kind of music you're going to be playing. So if you don't want to play classical, there's no reason to learn classical. You can learn how to read music within the context of learning popular piano. And since you already have a lot of musical knowledge, this method will make it easier for you to build on the strengths you already have, rather than trying to treat guitar and piano as totally separate. Yes, they are different instruments, but the base of music theory underlying them is the same.

And, perhaps even more important, the fact that both instruments can play chords, can play a melody line over other notes, means that the kind of musical skills you'll want to develop on the piano will be very similar to the kind you've already developed at the guitar.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

Thanks! I know what you mean.

I think your post is exactly how it'll play out. I'll continue learning how to read & play sheet music. You're absolutely correct too, it's been very easy playing the very basics of piano due to already knowing chord structures etc from playing guitar.

Main reason I self taught guitar was due to fear I'd go to lessons and basically have to learn songs I didn't want to and maybe get thrown off the idea altogether. I think there is this sort of concern again with learning to read sheet music etc as the majority of piano books or online courses I've seen have songs within them I've no care for and am worried that could maybe throw me off.

Currently I've got books with songs from Coldplay, Billy Joel & Keane and I've been playing the chords from them and just naturally working out the melody over them for the right hand if you get me? I understand this is not the most efficient way of doing things as to why I'm here!

Thank you

Ethan, there's no reason you can't learn to read piano grand staff (two lines of music, bass clef and treble clef) in the context of pop music and songs that you like.

Have you tried to find easy piano arrangements of pop songs just by googling the song title and "piano sheet"?

You should be able to find 1) simple solo versions with chords in left hand and melody in right have; 2) piano accompaniment which is written to accompany a singer -- google a song you like and "piano vocals guitar" score and you should be able to find scores written with three lines of music: piano LH, piano RH, melody w/lyrics, and guitar tabs with chord names written in; and 3) solo arrangements of the same songs.

You could even start some Beatles songs. Try books in the Hal Leonard catalog, or else look for PDFs of individual songs on a site like MusicNotes or SheetMusicDirect.

Good luck!!

Here's an example of what I mean:



This is a sample page from this book:

The Beatles Sheet Music Collection - Piano, Vocal and Guitar Chords

That score might look hard, but if you pick a song you know really well, then google "how to read treble clef" and learn the RH part. Then google "how to read bass clef" and learn the LH part. For now, skip the middle staff which has chords in the RH.

In the beginning, this will be harder than the YT video method, but do it a few times and it will get faster and easier. Then you can work on that middle staff and use your ear to decide whether to leave out any notes or which ones to leave out.

Sorry, two more links:

https://www.amazon.com/Leonard-Play-Popular-Piano-Lessons/dp/B0064S8C2K

https://www.halleonard.com/product/50482138/chord-approach-to-pop-piano-playing-complete

You may or may not be interested in these books, but I found them by Googling "how to play popular piano hal leonard" and there are tons more.

Hal Leonard is a good publisher for popular music, Alfred is maybe more classical. But the point is, you can totally do this and there are all kinds of sources to help you without pushing you toward the Bs (Bach, Beethoven....)

Hello, and welcome to Piano World!

Not sure where I got this, maybe from someone here on the ABF, but it is a lot of good info, practice, and fun, learning to read sheet-music notes, and keyboard note familiarization, all while at the computer. It's kind of a computer game, where you "name that note", or "click on the corresponding note on the keyboard".

I have a lot of websites in my PC bookmarks to help learn to read music. Like you, and a few others here, I'm familiar with the written score, but can't read and play at the same time, because I've never focused on it enough, or put much effort into it. I have so much fun playing by ear, it seems to satisfy my piano playing cravings, to an extent.

I admire those who can read music while they play the piano, and read well.

Here's the website I mentioned "MusicTheory.Net"

I have other website resources, but this is a really good one, especially the "Keyboard note identification". I'm sure you already know the notes on the bass and treble clefs, and this helps transfer the note reading to the keyboard. It does not, however, get into technique, or which fingers to use for certain notes, but a good place to start.

Like you, I transitioned from the guitar, and other string instruments, to the piano about 15 years ago. Wish I had done it years ago, when I was younger!

But you are young, and have plenty of time to meet your musical goals and beyond.

All the best!

Rick

Nothing against learning off YT videos whether you're imitating finger sequences or lighted keys. I know a man in his 70s with no background in music learned an advanced 5 min piece by following fingerings on YT down to the hand gestures. Took him 3 months to learn the notes under tempo but couldn't convince him to learn to read.

Being good at reading is a process you need to play new pieces all the time. Just learning all the symbols & repeating the same piece 100x you'd memorize the piece without getting good at reading. A good reader should be able to read through a piece the first time at or near the ideal tempo with few mistakes & hesitations.

In the beginning I wasn't a good reader. Used to read in small chunks & memorized the notes so I can get through the piece without reading. After taking lessons I can read intermediate pieces at a slower tempo. Once I learned the notes I can speed up. A few years ago it's basically 1 note at a time. After playing many pieces, you notice certain patterns would come up over & over so you'd anticipate what comes next in the music.

There are pieces with 1 melody line & chords on top like lead sheets. You need to read the RH but just 1 staff, 1 note at a time. Pieces with 2 staffs you need to read both LH & RH parts. I have a Reader's Digest songbook with chords & a bass part so you can play either way.



And you find versions of pieces (including Classical) for easy piano. These are stripped down pieces with fewer notes to read. I got a few books from the Faber Adult Adventures series for Classical, Jazz & Blues arranged for easy piano.

I enjoy playing with sheet music. It was something I struggled with as a child and when I restarted with piano as an adult I made a point to sight read each day to get better at it. I'm now 3 years in and sight reading sheet music has become much easier. It's truly one of my favorite parts of piano to just open sheet music and play whatever, even songs I haven't heard before I can discover just by reading the music. Plus when you want to play a lot of different things it's nice to be able to just read it, rather than learning it by ear first. And I don't have to memorize it, I can just remind myself of how it goes by looking at the music.

I subscribe to a sheet music app and just save any song I like and can play it the same day. And it's sort of self fulfilling to me, the more I sight read, the easier it is, and the more new music that is opened up to me. I'm pretty comfortable now with Easy Piano level music, but I look forward to a year or two from now when I'm well into intermediate and it will give me many more options for sheet music.

That said I admire people who are very comfortable playing by ear too. Although I wonder how to keep I'd keep the songs in my memory after I'd taught them to myself. I feel like they'd only stick around for as long as I practiced them?

Also as for how I learned, I started with method books and supplemental books that went along with the method books. I use the sheet music direct app now but it would have been too hard at the beginning. I started with very basic pieces and worked my way up. I practice sightreading at least a few minutes everyday with new music.

I would say it is sort of a necessity to be able to read music in order to say you play the piano well. This is a bit of a tricky one, but you definitely play the piano, and I think you may be able to play certain styles such as ragtime by ear. However, with classical, complicated jazz, or even more complicated pop solos, it will matter because the density of the textures and so on is much more dense and hard to pick up by ear. You probably know what I mean already -- you can't really pick out every single note with very good accuracy unless you have a marvelous ear, and even then, you will probably have to spend 15 minutes figuring out the exact notes that were used in a particular arpeggio, or whether or not there was a ninth in a particular chord.

It's fine. You see that the reason it worked for this piece is because it was sufficiently simple for you to essentially process and memorize in short order. You can continue learning similar pieces from YouTube tutorials, and I'm sure you'll succeed, but if you want to push yourself towards sufficiently more advanced material, this will prove to be a bottleneck. It also works for certain kinds of music which has relatively simple or familiar materials and which is simple to memorize. However, I can't imagine memorizing a Bach fugue this way, if you get what I mean.

Basically, whenever the music gets complicated in any way, it will sort of make it 2x harder to learn with sheet music, but 10x harder using synthesia/YouTube tutorials. For sufficiently simple music, however, the time taken in either case may be similar.

Hi all! Can I just say a massive thanks to you all & to replies above what I've quoted here too I didn't expect such in-depth replies!

This has all been massively helpful. I think I need to properly get into reading sheet music, although its not entirely necessary for what I'm probably looking to be able to do on piano it is for sure something I've always wanted to be able to do. I think if I didn't properly learn it now I'd always look back from here on in thinking "I could be so far into this by now had I just began it back then". If yous get what I mean.

Please keep recommending me website etc to learn from or books that I can buy. Again thank you all