the staff is a ladder, lines and spaces top to bottom
okay. you can find middle C, you know the black-key pattern is a map, and you know what a real keyboard feels like versus a toy one. now we need somewhere to write all this down. that's the staff.
here's the thing behind the thing. a staff is just five lines and four spaces, stacked up like a little ladder. each rung, line or space, is one note. music goes up the ladder, the notes go higher. music goes down the ladder, the notes go lower. that's the whole idea. everything else is memorizing which rung is which.
two staffs, not one
piano music uses two staffs stacked together, one for each hand. the top one is the treble staff, usually with your right hand. the bottom one is the bass staff, usually your left hand. together they're called the grand staff, which is a fancier name than it deserves, honestly, it's just two ladders taped together with middle C sitting on the little line right between them.
that's worth sitting with for a second. middle C isn't really "on" the treble staff or the bass staff. it lives in the gap between them, on a short line of its own. that's why we spent a whole lesson finding it on the keyboard first. once you know where it is with your hands, it's a lot easier to believe where it is on the page.
the lines and spaces, treble staff
bottom to top, the lines are E G B D F. most people learn this as "every good boy does fine," which is fine, use it if it helps. i never really used it myself, i just drilled the lines until they stuck, but if the sentence works for your brain, keep it.
the spaces, bottom to top, spell F A C E. that one's easy because it's an actual word.
the lines and spaces, bass staff
bottom to top, the lines are G B D F A. "good boys do fine always" is the phrase people use. the spaces are A C E G, "all cows eat grass." same deal, use the phrase or don't, whatever gets it into your head.
how to actually learn this at home
reading a staff isn't a thing you understand once and you're done. it's a thing you drill until your eye stops counting lines one at a time and just knows. so here's what i want you to do.
- draw five blank staffs on paper, or print some off, five lines each, nothing on them.
- write a random note, just a dot, somewhere on a line or space.
- name it out loud before you check. out loud, even if you feel silly. i still spell out scales out loud when i'm stuck on something with sharps in it, i decided a long time ago that accurate beats smooth, and saying it out loud slows me down just enough to get it right.
- check yourself against the E G B D F / F A C E ladder. if you're wrong, don't erase it and move on, figure out where you miscounted.
- do ten of these a day for a week. not an hour. ten notes, five minutes, done. this is the same rule as everything else in this class, short and daily beats long and occasional.
do this away from the keyboard first. i know that feels backwards, you want to touch keys, but if you're staring at the actual instrument while you learn the page, you'll cheat by finding the note by ear and never really learn to read it. give the page its own five minutes, then go find the notes on the keyboard after.
the pedal warning, early
i'm going to mention something now that we'll come back to properly later, because i want it in your head before you get curious. there's a pedal at the bottom of a real piano, the one on the right, that sustains the notes after you lift your fingers. it is tempting to just press it down and leave it there because everything sounds fuller right away.
don't. i did exactly this. i taught myself pedaling off a youtube video that showed me how to press it down and never once mentioned lifting it back up. i practiced for a month with the pedal glued to the floor, and everything I played turned into one long smeared chord, every note bleeding into the next. it took me a month to even notice something was wrong, because at home, alone, it just sounded sort of lush. it wasn't lush. it was a mess. i had to go back and relearn where to lift it, which was more annoying than learning it right the first time would have been.
so for now, if your keyboard has a pedal, leave your foot off it entirely. we're not there yet. read the staff first.
before next time
get five blank staffs drawn up, or find some printable ones, and do the ten-notes-a-day drill for the treble staff only this week. don't touch the bass staff yet, one ladder at a time is plenty.