The Piano Sight Reading Tricks That Make Reading Music 100% Easier 

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Lifelong pianist of some accomplishment, strong ear musician/improviser, decent reader…barely passable sight reader. 5 min. in, feel like I’m being given the keys to the kingdom. Your quiet clarity is powerful-a great teacher!

I think that a third skill involved is having a knowledge of the keyboard topography in your hands so you don't have to look down to play. Many people can read notes and intervals on page but struggle with sightreading because they don't trust or know the keyboard well enough to not look down.

I'm a piano teacher and I teach my students the exact same thing. Once you can see intervals and chords shapes piano can be just as easy as it is to read words. Sight reading is a great skill to have. Awesome video!

My aunt who was a professional pianist told me "look at the music - the keys don't move."

Wow! Every once in a while you find a gem on RU-vid. This is definitely a gem. Thanks so much. My sight reading is already improving. Why didn’t I know this before. How lucky are your students to have you as a teacher. Wish I’d started learning with you. Thanks so much for sharing. I really am impressed.

Suggestions for fellow viewers: Schumann’s Album for the Young has several great pieces for sight reading practice. Some nice ones to start with: nos. 1, 3 & 5 (all C maj), Chorale. All simple, but highly musical… & beautiful. Another great piece to sight read is Bach’s famous Prelude in C-you get a lot of musical “bang for your buck” because essentially every measure in the piece is repeated. And while you were playing the repetition, you can read ahead to the next measure. It is also heartbreakingly beautiful music.

Thank you!! Two more things that have helped me: 1. The "ACE" method. The bottom three spaces on the bass clef are ACE. The top three spaces on the treble clef are ACE. And the line between the clefs are ACE. (That C is the Middle C). They make a nice, symmetrical pattern on the clefs. (I am a visual person, so I can imagine them these without calculating them.) Then you can quickly deduce the notes around them. 2. For intervals: if both notes are on the same thing, meaning both are on a space or a line, then you know the interval is an odd number: a 3rd, a 5th, a 7th. If the interval notes are on different things, for example, one is on a line and one is on a space, then you know the interval is an even number: a 2nd, a 4th, a 6th, or an octave. I know you said this, but this is just a little more clarification. Thank you very much for this very helpful tutorial.

I started to learn the piano over 40 years ago. My ear was good, my music reading was truly awful. I staggered on for a decade or so, murdering Joplin, Chopin, Debussy and many more, until I could get no further with muscle memory and playing by ear alone. I’ve just chanced on this absolute gem of a tutorial. I WISH someone had explained it to me like this….. I’m going to have another go! Thank you so much.

Wow! I played piano for a few years before eventually losing interest due to not being able to read music very well. I was a self taught "every good boy does fine, all cows eat grass" kinda guy and even tried rote memorization of the notes. I spent countless hours slowly deciphering and memorizing some great songs but my inability to read faster really cut down on my enjoyment and what I could play. So I recently decided, I'm taking up piano again but this time I'm doing whatever it takes to become a "good" site reader. I stumbled across your video a couple days ago and have to say - I am officially a GBDFACE convert LOL! Two days of using your tricks has made me feel like I've supercharged my site reading quest! Thank you! 😃

This is sooo much easier than how I was taught. I would have actually practiced and not been tortured waiting to just go play football outside. Thanks for taking what seemed so hard and making it easy.

So an odd number interval looks even on the staff whereas an even number interval looks odd on the staff. Very useful to know.

Great stuff! When you say “I’ve got your back”, it sounds so genuine and heartfelt!

Excellent! Like someone else already said: I learned more in these few minutes than in several months. Thank you for a clear and simplified explanation!

I'm a guitar player and loved this breakdown, especially chord recognition. 🎹 The piano is precise when playing notes on the staff but the guitar can have several places the same note can be played. That makes sight reading a little more challenging!🎸😉

Thank you! I have been struggling with sight reading for years, and this is genius! Makes me see so much more clearly without stopping every two seconds to figure out the note on the page!

Great video and it makes reading a lot easier. Other few things which should be mentioned is: 1) take a note of which scale you in by looking at the key markers at the beginning of the 1st bar, and to make sure it is not a minor scale, check for frequently sharps and flatted notes. 2) scan also through the music to look for scale changes (modulations) and try to remember from and to scales the music goes. It often modulates back to beginning scale. 3) know how to play ALL the scales, majors, minors and chromatics in both hands!! This is imperative for playing any classical era pieces, they often has large passages of scales in them, but it helps with fingering and sight reading too. Yes I hated learning it and found playing all of them highly tedious, but you train your hands to be in the right spot when you start the piece, so then you don't have to worry about fingering, nor need to worry about which notes to sharpen/flatten, your hand will do that automatically as you move through the notes. When you see on the staff say a D, you don't need to think if they mean a D flat, D or D sharp, you know which it is!. I once played Beethovens' Sonata in E in front of my examiner in the wrong key, because I put my hand in the wrong spot by accident out of nervousness, to be told by the examiner, I have to do it over, I played in the wrong key! I don't know if people realise this, I think many don't. You can play any song in a major key in any other major key, similarly for minor key songs. It all depends on which note you started on where you placed you hand. The rest of the song is about distances (intervals) and the beat.

Best sight reading lesson I have come across. Thank you.

In less than 20 min into your video, I was sight reading with so much ease, you are truly wonderful. If only I had this lesson early in life:) but I am elated now still. I actually played from the score the first four measures "correctly" of Bach's Goldberg Variations "Aria". At 57, I have never achieved simply looking at the music and playing directly from the score itself until now, thank you again!!!

74 years old at the moment-taught myself to play the right hand years ago to practice my choir music. Taught myself guitar (Paul Simon), and played flute from age 9. Suddenly, I decided I wanted to play Moonlight Sonata before it just got too late. I’ve got a stack of books, but your one You Tube lesson made more sense than anything. I’m now more excited to really dig in and become a two-hand pianist. Thank you!

I've always done the interval reading part easily, but am bad at identifying notes. This was helpful, so thanks.

I have been teaching myself piano and have been doing these things naturally as obvious shortcuts. But I have been so worried that I'm not actually learning to "sight read" because I'm cheating the process in some way. To have a teacher recommend these shortcuts makes me feel a million times better about my process!

I am pretty sure you just healed my sight reading. Wow. (Guitarist).

Learned more in 20 minutes then I did after a year of weekly ear training/theory classes. Honestly bless you, this has helped me so much omg

4:00 Interval recognition (GBD)(FACE): 5:30 Bass clef; 5:55 Trebble clef 👍 7:30 Intervals: 8:18 2nd=steps; 10:05 3rd=skips; 11:26 4th (skip 2); 12:30 5th (skip3); 14:12 6th 7th 8th.

Yes! I always teach my students to not waste time reading each note. Esp for beginners that mostly stay in pentascale widths just changing hand positions, we can easily just say "skip a finger" for "line to line/ space to space" then after reveal that those moments are called 3rds.. reveal you are actually skipping one note within the regular scale. etc. Gives students lots of independence if you you can explain it well enough :)

I really appreciate the way you teach to read both clefs as one, you are genius.

Thanks for this quick lesson. In the past doing my private lessons with a private teacher, I always got stuck reading both staffs together (vertically) as I got into harder classical type music. I could never get comfortable in seeing all the notes and keep pace in playing the songs. Another words, I would always make mistakes or repeat myself. Also knowing where my hands playing together were on the keyboard. I knew the notes and intervals, but above was always my stumbling block or plateau of getting any better. I also played popular music and did playing by ear. All in all it was a nice learning experience. I started playing piano as an adult - age late 30's - then on for many years. in the past as a young kid played Trombone and stopped when I reached High School. I took up Guitar and still play the instrument from time to time. I am now retired. Take care.

I’ve watched this video about 10 times! It’s so incredibly helpful! Thanks so much, Leah!!❤

Great tips. I would also recommend to people to study harmony. If you can identify the chords as you play the music it makes things so much simpler. For example if you know it’s a C chord you know the notes will be based on CEG.

I've just started (yet again) learn the piano and sight reading has always been an issue, as you stated. Thank you.

I have been struggling with reading sheet music since a while now but I'm sure this technique will definately speed up my playing. I'm so glad that I came across your channel. Beautifully explained. It's a blessing for self taught students like me to gain knowledge from experienced teachers like you. Thank you again. Hope to see more music theory + techniques based videos on your channel.

I keep coming back to this lesson because its SO AWESOME 🎉🎉🎉THANK YOU SO MUCH 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 MORE BEAUTIFUL LESSONS PLEASE 🙏 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

This is actually amazing! I started self-teaching in October of 2020, and struggled to read sheet music for almost all of that time. I tried, but none of it ever made any sense to me. It was faster for me to use my ears and figure out what I was trying to play through experimentation. In using my ears, I actually discovered intervals pretty quickly, as identifying intervals is what allowed me to rapidly learn bits and pieces of music by ear. For example, I may not know what key the music is in, I may not know exactly what the notes are, but if I hear what sounds like a Pefect 5th, then I know exactly how to play that no matter where I start on the piano. I did eventually start taking real lessons a few months ago, and in that time I have learned quite a lot about sightreading. I actually managed to learn more about it than I thought I did. I pretty quickly noticed the relationship between the lines/spaces and how they corresponded to the piano. At first bass and treble being notated differently made no sense to me, until my teacher told me to imagine an invisible middle C connecting both clefs together. Then it just instantly made sense to me: bass and treble _are the entire piano._ For example, the lowest possible note in the bass clef is going to be the lowest possible note on the piano. The highest possible note in treble is going to be the highest possible note on the piano. Of course, these notes and their respective octaves will be notated _outside_ of the staff using additional ledger lines or spaces, but the point still stands. And smack dab in the middle is, well, middle C. Once I made this connection it made the sight reading _much easier._ If I saw an F in bass clef and saw something right above it, I just instantly knew it was a G. If I saw an A in bass cleff and saw a note 3 steps below that, I knew that was an F. Instead of thinking of the anagrams (every good boy does fine, all cows eat grass, etc) I imagined the entire piano and just knew exactly how to read what I was looking at. I still struggle to read chords, but super simple sheets for things like Christmas songs or nursery rhymes are no longer challenging. They are super easy and I can read them. I read them slowly, I work through it slowly, but I can tell exactly what the sheet music is telling me to do which I could not do previously. The point is, once you can look at a sequence of notes and just _know_ instantly what it is telling you to do, it just gets easier and easier to develop your sight reading for more complicated notation. I remember when my teacher was explaining intervals to me, I said "Oh, I know what that is, it's a Major 3rd", then she spat out random intervals and told me to play some of them. I got all of them right, and then when I made the connection about how the clefs _are_ the piano, I was like "wait, so this is how people sight read really well right? They're just looking at the gaps _between_ the notes?" I was surprised to learn that I was right about that.

I teach this exact same way! The interval training and “landmarks” are much easier to teach than all the other saying I once learned. Thanks for re-teaching this!

Holy moly, none of my piano teachers taught me this. Extremely helpful. Cheers from Jacksonville, fl

When I took lessons in the late 50s and early 60s, my teacher never taught me about interval recognition. So, I learned the hard way: sightreading slowly through Chopin, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Mozart and Bach, until it all became automatic -- but that took six years to do. In my old age, I have returned to the piano after 16 years away, and after 14 months of some relearning old repertoire and much sightreading of nine Mozart sonatas, the skill finally returned. I now find sightreading Mozart & Beethoven sonatas much less difficult, and I can learn them faster, and without so much effort as before This is one of the great joys of life.

Been playing piano for a year and your intro described my peril of note reading. Having learned the usual mnemonics it is painfully slow. Have never heard of GBD FACE. It does look intuitively better , just need to learn how to apply it at speed. Well explained. Thank you

In all my more than 50 + yrs of trying to learn note reading this is the BEST tutorial on reading notes I have ever seen or read,.

Thank you so much! Going on 68 and only took a year and a half or two of Piano in elementary school. I recently picked up the Harp which I love but I’m struggling reading notes. You have clarified for me in the span of this video exactly what I need to go forward! Thank you for taking time to publish this!

This requires me to learn new terminology as well. I had no idea what an Interval was til now. Thank you for the clarity. I just hear it🎼🎶🎹and play it. Notes terrify me. 😨 😱As a child I took lessons for two years. The teacher played the song and I could replicate it so never learned to read the notes. Suddenly she realized I played by ear and had not ever learned to read notes. So now some 40 years later after playing for churches, playing piano concerts, accompanying people, I am having to learn note sight reading as the new pianist for an SATB singing group. Why oh why did I say yes. 🙃 😅🎹🎼🎶 Because it will be a blast and I found you who has a wonderful way of teaching. Thank you. 🥰😘

This lesson is simply amazing, thank you. I tried for years to get faster at sight reading music but in twenty mins I'm already seeing improvement. Why isn't this being taught by other teachers, it's so much easier that Every good boy does fine. Thanks again.

❤❤❤ I agree with you. I taught my son piano he is an organ major now but yes ur teaching, tricks are very good!

I agree 100% - I was taught note identification when I was 8 or 9 and how to read the instructions but little else was explained. I wish my teachers had told me about pattern recognition. 1. Note and symbol recognition. 2. Interval and other pattern recognition. 3. This system was made for performing musicians and not for teaching so it’s not your fault that you can’t see the music in the notes.

One of the best piano tutorials, hands down. I love this.

Thank you. After many years you gave me hope. I will subscribe. You’re a good teacher

I took lessons for 4 years back in my 20's. I played for a while but stopped in my early 30's. Now that I have retired, I've started playing again and sight reading has been a focus. Your technique of looking at the bottom note and the interval instead of both notes has been a immediate improvement in my ability to sight read. Thanks for the tips!

Left : GBD FACE Right : FACE GBD Intervals 2nd 3rd 4th 5th - 7 semitones 6th 7th - normally @ the end of music Octaves Key and sharps

Exceptionally helpful. So glad I've discovered this channel. Love your 'no messing' approach. Thank you 🙏

Wow! I'm a drummer that went to music school, always struggled with reading pitched music. This was a huge help. Thanks!!!

I'm a guitarist and this video was very useful to me.

An excellent tutorial, it has improved my sight reading 100% more! Thank you so much!

I have watched loads of music theory videos but this video I understood clearly and precisely. Thank you so much for ages no make that years, I have tried and tried to get my head around reading music and after the second watch of this video I have conquered "GIBIDY FACE" so again thank you. I totally understand the two thought process of converting with the rhymes of Good Boys Deserve Fish Always and Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit because I have used this method over and over again upon many occasions and ledger lines were a bit daunting to say the least as they did not come into the realm of the rhymes in my minds eye. No longer will that be because of INTERVALS recognition. woo hoo. I knew all about intervals but applying them in a meaningful manner has finally happened with what you demonstrated so again thank you. Keep up the good gift that you have of finding methodologies like the two that you have shared within this video and yes I pressed the subscribed button in anticipation to your next video. cheers Brian Stewart (a Kiwi from down under)

this is the simplest and most effective tutorial I've seen, thanks a lot

I've been self taught for a long time, including sight reading, and aware of the general concepts you referenced, but the way you called out the simultaneous intervals with the boxes and described the geometry and the even/odd perspective was brilliant. It'll help me improve faster. If something looks about the size of a 4th or 5th but looks even, then it's a 5th. Cool.

Wonderful explanation,wish I had this approach in my formative years,keep up the great videos.

Thanks; much easier than the silly two step process we were taught, which is the reason I play by ear.

Excellent way to make sight reading a way of moving through the music in a relative way rather have to recognise each of the individual notes. Even if you knew every note, that’s still not enough when reading chords. Thinking in terms of intervals and where you were one note (or two) before is so much more intuitive. The GBD FACE patterns across the entire staff/keyboard was something new for me. Keeps it’s simple! I’d like to add one suggestion. Learn to play the piano without looking at the keyboard. FEEL your way around (often by moving relative from where you happen to be), but practice being able to feel out any note on the keyboard without looking (shut your eyes!) This means that when you read music, your eyes are always on the score and you never have to look down, and then lose your place in the music (or lose the sense of where’re you’re going or have been relatively)! :)

That gbd face hack totally changed my sight reading speed! So much more easier! Thanks so much 🙏

Learned a lot in 20 minutes, you are an awesome teacher. Thank you very much.

GBD FACE - my BASS learnings just intensified! Thank you.

Amazing tutorial! Have been working hard recently to undo the bad habit my childhood piano teacher instilled in me with those mnemonics! But breaking down the intervals like this is a revelation - thank you so much!

Oh. My. Gawd. You are an Angel. I took piano lessons when when 10 years old, over one summer. Lost my teacher (business closed), and I have continued on my own, correction, struggled on my own for 47 years now. I have tried to teach myself to sight-read with no success and have been miserable for half a century. I’ve moved four times and carried my upright piano through every move even though I could barely play a handful of hard-memorized pieces - half of Für Elise, half of Clair de Lune, part of this and that. The thought I may now be able to open my world, and my house to more music literally brings tears to my eyes. Thank you, thank you, thank you... Go raibh maith agat! I have also sent you a small payment as I cannot afford much right now, but I will never forget you. Oh, and SUBSCRIBED!

The key skill is to be able to read music as effortlessly as reading a newspaper, and to train your hands and fingers to process this into motion on the keyboard. All without thinking about it all. Great piano virtuosos have this skill. It is a worthy goal to aim for.😁❤️🎹

This is indeed a revelation. I'd have learnt to read better had I known this before

Just wonderful trick, method or whatever is called. Thank you so much.

I love this ... very useful tool. One thing regarding consecutivr fifths: Claude Debussy loved them ... as did Vaughan Williams.

GBD FACE might be the most useful way to sightread, Im trying a few landmark systems but GBD FACE helps with easily recognising both clefs

you are SIMPLY fantastic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thank you SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!

I honestly think of all the mnemonic devices I’ve ever heard taught to students to remember the notes on the grand staff, “jibidy face” and “face jibidy” is the most straight forward and easy to remember I have ever encountered. I’ve tried to think up better mnemonics and never came up with something so simple and easy to quickly remember. Thanks and I look forward to sharing that tip! :)

3 minutes in and this is already far more helpful than any other guide or tutorial ive seen!

Did you download your free piano practice workbook yet? 🤩 Get it here: mailchi.mp/bccb1e32807f/practice-workbook-giveaway

You emphasize important concepts. As a church musician who has had to sight read a great deal (as a choral accompanist), I would urge that one's ability to read rhythm and keep up with the pulse is the MOST IMPORTANT key to good sight reading. You can drop notes right and left, but so long as you keep with the director and the choir, all will end relatively well. If you lose the beat, then EVERYTHING is wrong!

LeCheile's sight reading tricks are helping me already, after only 2 0r 3 days of trying them!

Wow!! Your the best. I have watched this video and took screen shots of your slides and already as a beginner I understand it really well. your awesome a big thank you for your time. I have subscribed and are looking forward to more of your tutorials.

I just wanted to say THANK YOU! I am an adult learner but have been "playing" for years (on and off). I have always struggled with sight reading and never really got it. I love Jibidy Face. FINALLY I feel like I'm getting it. Your style and explanations are great and suit me down to the ground. Daisy is very sweet too.

I've been singing most of my life, and I've gotten really good at sight-singing. I guess my main issues are that I simply am not accustomed to two hands and sight-reading multiple notes at the same time. I just have to work on my facility on the keyboard. Bass clef is also relatively new to me (always reading treble clef for my voice range), so sometimes I'll recognize the note a hair later than I would for treble clef.

I'm trying to teach my 68 year old mind to remember what I knew at 10 years old, and you just told me how!!

gosh... thank you. I'm a complete beginner, but I get it.

Coming back to this after first watching it about a month ago, the brilliance of your approach is even clearer to me. Instead of “Every Good Boy Does Fine, FACE“ etc.,thought of as mnemonics for remembering the lines and spaces on the treble clef, for instance, you use GBD-FACE as a master key to unlock ANY sequence of lines and/or spaces, anywhere on, above, or below either clef. The power of this tool alone is remarkable, and incalculably more valuable than those traditional mnemonics. Also fascinating to learn the terms “G clef” and “F clef” and connect them with the symbols for the two clefs. Once more, thank you for this absolutely superb piece of education!

'A 'g' that got out of hand.' 😂

Thanks! How lucky we are to have these videos available from such a wonderful teacher.

Thank you for emphasizing reading by interval. As a pianist and teacher, I know that this is incredibly important. Thanks for explaining it in a very clear and helpful way!

I know that this video is like two years old at this point, but I just want to say thank you for sharing this knowledge! I have always struggled with exactly this as I learned by ear. Now I'm trying to become a music teacher and this tool is magnificent!

That was fantastic! I was reading intervals looking for patterns as I also use patterns in website design. Just starting out with piano and didn't see the GBD FACE but know in the g and f clefs gives me an anchor and I think I can do this - was giving up.

GBD FACE is just another trick like all the ones you mentioned, but you are spot on about the intervals. I learned how to read music as an adult by using cue cards. You can easily make them by drawing them out, but you can also buy them. Just sit at your piano, take a cue card, if you do not know how to indentify the note, the answer is on the back. Identify the note, play the note with the correct hand and pick the next card. Rinse and repeat. I was trying to learn the notes during my lessons with my teacher but it never clicked, 2 months of lessons to only be able to identify middle C, and the G and F (which is extremely easy because in my language the Treble Clef is called the G-key and the Bass Clef is called the F-key) with the cue cards I learned to read all notes within 1 month. The cue cards also teach intervals, chords, arpeggio's etc.

What would be really helpful are tips for reading both staves at the same time. This is something that I just cannot crack.

Thank you so much for posting this lesson. I'm new to keyboard playing and this has helped me a whole lot. I always wondered how ppl could just look at a new piece of music and instantly play it on the keyboard in real time while reading the notes, and you have clearly answered this question- they just identify the starting note and use that as a reference point for all other notes that follow. Thank you so much for this. It has helped me a whole lot.

I was laughing when you went on about the sentences 😂.. I absolutely detest those sentences and advice my students to never rely on them. This is very useful Jibidy Face 😂😂😂 Brilliant!

Thank you, I have been playing music for over 50 years and never heard of Jibidy Face, this will be so helpful to many in their studies, good work thanks.

I’m curious to know: do you already use interval/pattern recognition to sightread or is this a new approach for you?

Thank you for the best explanation!

I think this lesson literally saved 3 months from learning to read the sheet

Thank you so very much! You taught me more in 20 minutes, then I have learnt in 2 years! Thank you so much. Best wishes in 2023!

Wow!! A new insult...."you dozy jibbidy face" AND a golden key to unlock the mysteries of the Grand Staff! Thank you.

Thank you so much for helping me getting a huge block on my music journey!!! Much love!!!❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

That GBDFACE thing just blew my mind why isn’t that a universally taught thing😵

I was taught piano 60 odd years ago and I admit sight reading did not come easy. However, I recently discovered that I am dyslexic! Now that will make a difference.

Excellent, 'GBD FACE' never before made understanding piano notes to me so simple. Thank you so much Le Chéile!

PPS: I have only noticed that your audio is lagging a little bit, so your comments on the notes on the screen didn't match with what was actually to be seen at that moment. Just a tip for future videos. :-)