THE TREBLE CLEF

Welcome to lesson two in Sight Reading Made Simple! In this section of the series, you’re going to learn
how to read the notes on the lines and spaces of the treble clef.

This is what the treble clef looks like:

This symbol tells us that we are going to be playing with our right hand. The treble clef exists on what we
call the staff, which is just a fancy name for five lines and four spaces. Here’s what the staff looks like with
a treble clef and 4/4 time signature:

Each one of these lines and spaces represents a letter of the musical alphabet.

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EVERY GOOD BOY DOES FINE
Now that’s a lot to remember! Fortunately, there are some easy ways to remember the note names. To do
this, it can be helpful to think of an easy-to-remember phrase. For example, the lines on the treble staff
represent the notes E, G, B, D, and F. To remember this, teachers often use the phrase: Every Good Boy
Deserves Fudge. It’s a silly phrase, but it’s easy to remember and the first letter of each word represents
the note!

You can also use the phrase: Every Good Boy Does Fine. Feel free to use whichever phrase is easiest to
remember!

FACE
Remembering the spaces is even easier than remembering the lines! From the bottom, the notes are F, A,
C and E. They spell the word FACE!

As you can see, the order of notes on the staff is the same as the order of notes on the actual keys on the
piano. So F comes after E, but before G, and so on.

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MIDDLE C: A LINE OF ITS OWN
So where is Middle C in all of this? Remember Middle C is our home base? Well, Middle C is actually below
the staff, on a separate little line of its own. We’ll talk about why that is later in the series, but for now, you
just need to know that’s where it is. Here is Middle C looks like:

So if that is C, then the space above the Middle C line but below the E line would be D! So going up from C
we have C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E and F on the top line. And that’s as far as we will go:

SPEEDING IT UP
So now we know what all the notes are, how do we get better at reading them quickly? We don’t want to
stop at each note to figure out which one it is!

I find the easiest way to read notes, especially if you are reading them for the first time, is to combine know-
ing a few ‘landmark’ notes and then looking for patterns in the music.

For example. We know that notes that go from a line to a space, or from a space to a line are just one step
apart. This means if we have Middle C, which is a line and D, which is a space, we can READ the C and the
look at the next note and know it’s a D based on how far away it is from the C. If that pattern continues from
line to space to line, we know we are just stepping up one note at a time:

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The more you practice and play, the more you will remember and get comfortable with all the notes on the
staff, but this is a great way to increase the speed of your reading as you practice.

We can also use the same logic for what I like to call jumps or skips. That’s where you have a line note
going to the next line note. Or a space note going to the next space. It’s jumping or skipping over the line
or space in between.

So let’s start on Middle C again which is our landmark note. Just from that, we can tell that the next line up
will be E, because it is two steps away from C on the keyboard. And the next line is G, which is two steps
up from E!

And that’s your introduction to the treble clef! Be sure to check out the lesson for more information on this
topic and for exercises to work on these skills. The next lesson is all about the bass clef and playing with
the left hand, so I’ll see you there!

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