I’m getting good at reading sheet music now. I’m starting to play pieces without looking at my hands and I’ve only been playing for a year and a half. I really enjoy reading sheet music
Perfect video out there for me. I just started playing piano but was strugling a lot on understanding the scales and how chords help but you made it very clear. Thank you
@@deepuniverse4840 there are still some things that I do not understand very clearly. If u can help me. So first I thought we play chords on left hand and melody on right hand. Then in this video Matt talks about chords in right hand. Now I am confused about chords,melodies and bass notes. Like which hand is used for it and all.
Chords are often played with the left hand as an accompany for the right hand. But not always obviously, you can just play chords as good as with your right hand
Chords are actually a combination of the notes between both hands…sometimes in pieces there are more of those notes in the left hand and sometimes there are more of them in the right hand. If you have a G major chord (G B D), you may have a G and a D in the left hand and a G and a B in the right hand…across both hands you are playing a G major chord 😊 In the previous video on chord patterns I suggested playing chords in the right hand with the melody and the bass note in the left hand. This is to make the notes sound less muddy…but the chord is still a combination of the bass notes and the notes you play in the right hand from the chord and is a great pattern to learn so that all of your own versions of songs don’t sound muddy if all the notes are too low. Sometimes composers will want the left hand to sound a little more full and therefore place more chord notes in the left hand 😊
@@matticawood Bro ur so underrated , ur pulling off some of the best piano content both for education and entertainment ... Thanks for what u do man , keep being as amazing as you are
Why am I paying a piano teacher weekly, when I can come here and learn more information in less time and have it actually make sense?? Thank you thank you thank you, Matthew, for all of the time and effort you put into your content. If it's saving me from giving up on an instrument I've wanted to play for decades (shhhhh, we don't need to linger on the plural of decade), I'm sure it's saving others as well. This really is such an underrated channel, and I can't wait for others to find it and get just as inspired.
Hi I'd like to give you a tip. I only started a little under 4 months ago but I already compose my own music. I really practiced all the scales with correct fingerings and all the chords plus inversions first and I am currently getting into sightreading. Being able to play without sheet music first just by understanding the relation to the notes, intervals and chords helps me tremendously and learning sheet music almost feels to easy to me right now. Understand your circle of fifths and happy jamming :D
Well, I watched the entire video for the first time. My head is swimming a bit, but I know enough to make sense out of this excellent video. But I'm going to have to watch it at least a few more times.
"I'm going to have to watch it at least a few more times." - Isn't that one of the GREAT things about modern technology!? FOR FREE - you can hit the 🔁 button until your finger/thumb falls off until you get a concept! YEAH! It's a wonder 🤔 how people, who lived in a time of "only getting info from a book or printed page" became to the people who invented computers, digital storage systems, "screens" and the internet's information super highway! - - But you know what hasn't changed - - people STILL have to repeat & repeat & repeat & repeat until they get a concept to click - - and then STICK in their head, don't they? That's what music teachers call PRACTICING ON YOUR OWN instead of just showing up for a piano lesson every week but the student NEVER did the daily - "repeat & repeat & repeat & repeat until they get a concept to click" thing BEFORE going to their lesson. Just sayin'...
I’ve played piano for 2 years and I’m honestly pretty good playing by ear but I’ve never been taught sheet music and I want to because it seems like fun
@matticawood I've recently been getting your videos in my YT feed and greatly appreciate the effective & efficient presentations on your channel!!! I am a 30-year, veteran public school & private Music Teacher and find it a pleasure to see how you successfully "nutshell" so many music concepts. I'm also, always one to be full of "suggestions" to tweak things to suit my style or to adjust things to fit the learning styles of my students. One suggestion I have is with your visual/graphic of the Treble & Bass Clef notes: Would you consider 1) presenting the noteheads and letternames of the lines & spaces in two different colors 2) with the middle C being the two colors combined? (i.e. Treble = yellow, Bass = blue, Middle C = green) 3) As well as showing those two colors on the keyboard you display? And then 4) showing the Treble & Bass staves TOGETHER on the screen so that viewers can see the contrary motion that is made? I ask this because missing the concept that the left hand is playing the music alphabet BACKWARDS - is the reason that people have such a hard time with coordinating their left hand WITH the right hand. Our human brains have to have time to grow more dentrites and synapses in our brain to be able to work with SIMULTANEOUSLY CONTRASTING CONCEPTS and then convert the concept into physical responses. It's just a tweak! But, even without knowing it, your viewers will understand what you are so quickly touching on without even knowing that they "get it"! 😂 Thanks again for your hard work!!!
6:52 @matticawood - I got very excited when you made the connection of seeing/reading music in PATTERNS and mentioned the Scale! But you also might want to squeeze in Unisons, Arpeggios and Neighboring Tones before the intro of Key signatures and scales.
Your channel is exactly what I needed. Ive always loved the piano, but other than playing off muscle memory I never really quite understood what music ACTUALLY is. I knew there is some underlying "language" that one has to learn, which then connects all the dots, and I believe you are teaching exactly that. Breaking down these abstract topics into different stages really exposes the fundamental concepts. This video, and the one about chords truly have changed how I approach my learning. It also motivates me to study music theory and learn how to play the piano properly, not just following tutorials. I really appreciate all your content. Perhaps you could also make a video about transcribing music in the future? Ive seen a clip of frank tedesco recommending that transcribing music really helps to think about what you are playing. It is quite am ambitious task to start while still learning the basics, but I would appreciate your thoughts on it, and maybe how to go about learning to transcribe music as a tool for piano learning.
Nice video 🙂 I've just started reading grade 2 level, and use a mixture of landmark notes with stepping or skipping up and down. Will get to reading whole words soon...I hope!
Sometimes I think think I need to bookmark one of your videos because it’s useful. Then I realise I just need to bookmark you! This is getting ridiculous…..you explain so clearly. I’ve been a musician of indifferent ability on various instruments for over forty years and I’ve seen a lot. You are genuinely one of the best educators and communicators I’ve seen. Well done. The thing I’m struggling with going from single line instruments to piano……how do I know which notes go on which hands? Thinking of pieces such as Satie Gymnopodie. I couldn’t figure it out from the sheet music and had to resort to RUclips tutorials to discover that the left hand is all up in the right hand business. Not to mention I have an urtext edition so my chords are split over the staves, and when I started trying to look it up most other versions put the chords entirely in the treble clef….. so confusing. I’m sure it must be good for me though. And then there are other pieces where the left jumps over the top to squirt in a cheeky extra high note…..how do I know to do that? And peddling instructions……It’s these piano specific things that are tripping me up now. Very disconcerting to have new information from something I thought I understood. Any chance of some suggestions, or a collab video with a single line playing friend where you can look at some differences? It would be really helpful to me if you could.
Hi Matthew, how do I stop myself from cheating when sight reading? I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to sight reading. I am currently able to identify individual notes, although sometimes I do need a few seconds, but my problem is that when learning a piece by sight reading. After playing through it a couple of times I automatically memorise the notes and no longer actively read the sheet music. This is slowing down my progress. The only tip my teacher gives me is to ''just not do it,'' but it happens automatically. I don't know how to not do this. How do I fix this? Also, whenever I look at my hands to place them on the correct keys, when looking back up, I cannot find where I am in the music, how do I fix this?
Hey! Only read a piece of music intended for sight reading once! Once you read a piece of music for the second time you are no longer sight reading it…you are memorising it and trying to correct the mistakes you made the first time. This is completely fine if you want to perfect that piece of music. - but this is learning the piece of music, not sight reading it. However, if your intention is to get good at sight reading, you need to read separate pieces of music only once and then move on. This will make sure that you have no option but to read the music 😊 over time, if you practice sight reading…your hands will get better at judging where they are going and you won’t feel the need to look down so much. When I was learning to sight read, I had a stack of random music and each day I would play through one before going on to pieces that I was learning 😊
@@matticawood Thanks for this quick and thorough response. I am certainly going to try and fit this into my daily routine. I'll send you my one year progress video next year!
I have some ABRSM books with short pieces to sight read, in preparation for my exam next month. 30 seconds of analysing each piece before playing through, and I'm getting better at it 🙂 I thought the same, with trying to read pieces as I played & learnt them. My teacher told me it's OK to memorise and look at my hands while learning & playing 'longer' pieces, and that sight reading would come with reading many different pieces. Try getting some books that have loads of of short pieces / sight reading exercises, and do a few every day - seems to be working for me so far!
Hey Matthew, so I saw some videos of yours where you were reacting to famous piano players or youtubes etc. I wanted to suggest reacting to some Patrick Pieterschmenn (I probably butchered that name). Immaterial and some of his latest works have really been amazing pieces.
Do you have any suggestions about books to get, I am around grade 3-5 in piano. I sight read in a brass band but that's just one line so I can sight read one line very easily but the more than one part can cause some issues so appreciate this video. Just a lot of the books my dad has are Grade 7-9 things that are really hard or just not in my skill range yet. I want to practice sight reading on slightly easier pieces than that. So wondering if you have any suggestions? thank you
I would recommend looking at the ABRSM syllabuses for grade 4/5/6 and then searching on Google for the pieces they have listed with “pdf” after them or find them on “imslp”. Then you will find the exact right level for you. However, if necessary - any music is ok! It’s about noticing what is happening in the music. What key is it in, what chords are being used, are there any scale passages, does it have any random notes that aren’t in the key? If you can try and work out what is happening in the piece of music and then very slowly navigate your way through it, then you will make progress 😊 There are also lots of compilation books of simplified versions of famous pieces that might be a good level for you.
@@matticawood It's funny, because of I compose music, you've seen my love theme for example, it's easy for me to analyse the music but my hands don't do what I know the music is doing harmonically. (I'm a very big theory studier) That sounds stupid now I write it but it's true sadly. That might be a technique issue. It's why I wish I had a physical teacher to notice what I am doing wrong because there are occasions I don't know what I am doing wrong and I end up having to do trial and error with what fingers or positioning my hand to get it right so I can prepare to do the next move for the next chord say.
Because a scale in 12TET goes like: Whole step, Whole step, half step, Whole step, Whole step, Whole step, half step. So the piano is just laid out as the major scale would look like.
I am playing the piano for 10 years now. I gave up on sheet music 2-3 years ago. Im only using these youtube tutorials with the falling keys. Never had more fun playing piano. Sheet music just isn't for me. It took me so much longer to learn with sheet music.
I think it’s a personal preference, my videos were at one time much slower, however the faster paced videos tend to be what the majority of people prefer judging by the analytics. However, rewatching or slowing the video down allows everyone to get the information they need from it 😊
![Twenty One Pilots - The Line (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XCz7WUotXs8/mqdefault.jpg)
I’m getting good at reading sheet music now. I’m starting to play pieces without looking at my hands and I’ve only been playing for a year and a half. I really enjoy reading sheet music
Perfect video out there for me. I just started playing piano but was strugling a lot on understanding the scales and how chords help but you made it very clear. Thank you
Same ! This video is like perfect timing for me cuz my whole piano journey was without sheet music and now Im planning to finally learn it
@@deepuniverse4840 there are still some things that I do not understand very clearly. If u can help me. So first I thought we play chords on left hand and melody on right hand. Then in this video Matt talks about chords in right hand. Now I am confused about chords,melodies and bass notes. Like which hand is used for it and all.
Chords are often played with the left hand as an accompany for the right hand. But not always obviously, you can just play chords as good as with your right hand
Chords are actually a combination of the notes between both hands…sometimes in pieces there are more of those notes in the left hand and sometimes there are more of them in the right hand.
If you have a G major chord (G B D), you may have a G and a D in the left hand and a G and a B in the right hand…across both hands you are playing a G major chord 😊
In the previous video on chord patterns I suggested playing chords in the right hand with the melody and the bass note in the left hand. This is to make the notes sound less muddy…but the chord is still a combination of the bass notes and the notes you play in the right hand from the chord and is a great pattern to learn so that all of your own versions of songs don’t sound muddy if all the notes are too low.
Sometimes composers will want the left hand to sound a little more full and therefore place more chord notes in the left hand 😊
@@matticawood Bro ur so underrated , ur pulling off some of the best piano content both for education and entertainment ...
Thanks for what u do man , keep being as amazing as you are
Why am I paying a piano teacher weekly, when I can come here and learn more information in less time and have it actually make sense??
Thank you thank you thank you, Matthew, for all of the time and effort you put into your content. If it's saving me from giving up on an instrument I've wanted to play for decades (shhhhh, we don't need to linger on the plural of decade), I'm sure it's saving others as well.
This really is such an underrated channel, and I can't wait for others to find it and get just as inspired.
Hi I'd like to give you a tip. I only started a little under 4 months ago but I already compose my own music. I really practiced all the scales with correct fingerings and all the chords plus inversions first and I am currently getting into sightreading. Being able to play without sheet music first just by understanding the relation to the notes, intervals and chords helps me tremendously and learning sheet music almost feels to easy to me right now. Understand your circle of fifths and happy jamming :D
That was so well explained! Reading sheet notes like we read entire words, it's really complicated in the beginning
Well, I watched the entire video for the first time. My head is swimming a bit, but I know enough to make sense out of this excellent video. But I'm going to have to watch it at least a few more times.
"I'm going to have to watch it at least a few more times." - Isn't that one of the GREAT things about modern technology!? FOR FREE - you can hit the 🔁 button until your finger/thumb falls off until you get a concept! YEAH! It's a wonder 🤔 how people, who lived in a time of "only getting info from a book or printed page" became to the people who invented computers, digital storage systems, "screens" and the internet's information super highway! - - But you know what hasn't changed - - people STILL have to repeat & repeat & repeat & repeat until they get a concept to click - - and then STICK in their head, don't they? That's what music teachers call PRACTICING ON YOUR OWN instead of just showing up for a piano lesson every week but the student NEVER did the daily - "repeat & repeat & repeat & repeat until they get a concept to click" thing BEFORE going to their lesson. Just sayin'...
I’ve played piano for 2 years and I’m honestly pretty good playing by ear but I’ve never been taught sheet music and I want to because it seems like fun
@matticawood I've recently been getting your videos in my YT feed and greatly appreciate the effective & efficient presentations on your channel!!! I am a 30-year, veteran public school & private Music Teacher and find it a pleasure to see how you successfully "nutshell" so many music concepts.
I'm also, always one to be full of "suggestions" to tweak things to suit my style or to adjust things to fit the learning styles of my students.
One suggestion I have is with your visual/graphic of the Treble & Bass Clef notes: Would you consider
1) presenting the noteheads and letternames of the lines & spaces in two different colors
2) with the middle C being the two colors combined? (i.e. Treble = yellow, Bass = blue, Middle C = green)
3) As well as showing those two colors on the keyboard you display? And then
4) showing the Treble & Bass staves TOGETHER on the screen so that viewers can see the contrary motion that is made?
I ask this because missing the concept that the left hand is playing the music alphabet BACKWARDS - is the reason that people have such a hard time with coordinating their left hand WITH the right hand. Our human brains have to have time to grow more dentrites and synapses in our brain to be able to work with SIMULTANEOUSLY CONTRASTING CONCEPTS and then convert the concept into physical responses.
It's just a tweak! But, even without knowing it, your viewers will understand what you are so quickly touching on without even knowing that they "get it"! 😂 Thanks again for your hard work!!!
your your your... AN AMAZING TEACHER.
6:52 @matticawood - I got very excited when you made the connection of seeing/reading music in PATTERNS and mentioned the Scale! But you also might want to squeeze in Unisons, Arpeggios and Neighboring Tones before the intro of Key signatures and scales.
Excellent….love your approach 🙏🩷🙂
Your channel is exactly what I needed. Ive always loved the piano, but other than playing off muscle memory I never really quite understood what music ACTUALLY is. I knew there is some underlying "language" that one has to learn, which then connects all the dots, and I believe you are teaching exactly that. Breaking down these abstract topics into different stages really exposes the fundamental concepts. This video, and the one about chords truly have changed how I approach my learning. It also motivates me to study music theory and learn how to play the piano properly, not just following tutorials. I really appreciate all your content.
Perhaps you could also make a video about transcribing music in the future? Ive seen a clip of frank tedesco recommending that transcribing music really helps to think about what you are playing. It is quite am ambitious task to start while still learning the basics, but I would appreciate your thoughts on it, and maybe how to go about learning to transcribe music as a tool for piano learning.
I'm glad that I learned how to play the trumpet around 7 years ago so I can read notes 😅
Nice video 🙂
I've just started reading grade 2 level, and use a mixture of landmark notes with stepping or skipping up and down. Will get to reading whole words soon...I hope!
Thanks for the lesson
Thank you I just started reading cheat music this video will definitely help
“Cheat” music 👀
"Cheat" music = lead sheets 😂
I like the new background
Thanks, I’m currently away from my natural habitat..so I’m glad it looks good 😊
This is perfect for where I am in learning piano, keep it up!:)
Another video to save and revisit from time to time!
Sometimes I think think I need to bookmark one of your videos because it’s useful.
Then I realise I just need to bookmark you! This is getting ridiculous…..you explain so clearly. I’ve been a musician of indifferent ability on various instruments for over forty years and I’ve seen a lot. You are genuinely one of the best educators and communicators I’ve seen. Well done.
The thing I’m struggling with going from single line instruments to piano……how do I know which notes go on which hands? Thinking of pieces such as Satie Gymnopodie. I couldn’t figure it out from the sheet music and had to resort to RUclips tutorials to discover that the left hand is all up in the right hand business. Not to mention I have an urtext edition so my chords are split over the staves, and when I started trying to look it up most other versions put the chords entirely in the treble clef….. so confusing. I’m sure it must be good for me though.
And then there are other pieces where the left jumps over the top to squirt in a cheeky extra high note…..how do I know to do that? And peddling instructions……It’s these piano specific things that are tripping me up now. Very disconcerting to have new information from something I thought I understood. Any chance of some suggestions, or a collab video with a single line playing friend where you can look at some differences? It would be really helpful to me if you could.
thank you! this video greatly helped me among other yt videos. thanks a lot!
I already knew 37 symbols. Thanks for the insight
Great video❤
Thanks 🙃
So true
Great video thanks. I’d love to be better at sight reading and playing with meaning, rather than just correct notes.
Thank you❤🔥
Loved this video❤
My own way for remembering the Bass scale was "Good Boys Don't F*** Around"
good one my guy!
Man, I need to practice more
Hi Matthew, how do I stop myself from cheating when sight reading? I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to sight reading. I am currently able to identify individual notes, although sometimes I do need a few seconds, but my problem is that when learning a piece by sight reading. After playing through it a couple of times I automatically memorise the notes and no longer actively read the sheet music. This is slowing down my progress. The only tip my teacher gives me is to ''just not do it,'' but it happens automatically. I don't know how to not do this. How do I fix this?
Also, whenever I look at my hands to place them on the correct keys, when looking back up, I cannot find where I am in the music, how do I fix this?
Hey! Only read a piece of music intended for sight reading once!
Once you read a piece of music for the second time you are no longer sight reading it…you are memorising it and trying to correct the mistakes you made the first time. This is completely fine if you want to perfect that piece of music. - but this is learning the piece of music, not sight reading it.
However, if your intention is to get good at sight reading, you need to read separate pieces of music only once and then move on. This will make sure that you have no option but to read the music 😊 over time, if you practice sight reading…your hands will get better at judging where they are going and you won’t feel the need to look down so much.
When I was learning to sight read, I had a stack of random music and each day I would play through one before going on to pieces that I was learning 😊
@@matticawood Thanks for this quick and thorough response. I am certainly going to try and fit this into my daily routine. I'll send you my one year progress video next year!
I have some ABRSM books with short pieces to sight read, in preparation for my exam next month.
30 seconds of analysing each piece before playing through, and I'm getting better at it 🙂
I thought the same, with trying to read pieces as I played & learnt them. My teacher told me it's OK to memorise and look at my hands while learning & playing 'longer' pieces, and that sight reading would come with reading many different pieces.
Try getting some books that have loads of of short pieces / sight reading exercises, and do a few every day - seems to be working for me so far!
Hey Matthew, so I saw some videos of yours where you were reacting to famous piano players or youtubes etc. I wanted to suggest reacting to some Patrick Pieterschmenn (I probably butchered that name). Immaterial and some of his latest works have really been amazing pieces.
Can you do epilogue from lalaland
Do you have any suggestions about books to get, I am around grade 3-5 in piano. I sight read in a brass band but that's just one line so I can sight read one line very easily but the more than one part can cause some issues so appreciate this video. Just a lot of the books my dad has are Grade 7-9 things that are really hard or just not in my skill range yet. I want to practice sight reading on slightly easier pieces than that. So wondering if you have any suggestions? thank you
I would recommend looking at the ABRSM syllabuses for grade 4/5/6 and then searching on Google for the pieces they have listed with “pdf” after them or find them on “imslp”. Then you will find the exact right level for you.
However, if necessary - any music is ok! It’s about noticing what is happening in the music. What key is it in, what chords are being used, are there any scale passages, does it have any random notes that aren’t in the key?
If you can try and work out what is happening in the piece of music and then very slowly navigate your way through it, then you will make progress 😊
There are also lots of compilation books of simplified versions of famous pieces that might be a good level for you.
@@matticawood It's funny, because of I compose music, you've seen my love theme for example, it's easy for me to analyse the music but my hands don't do what I know the music is doing harmonically. (I'm a very big theory studier) That sounds stupid now I write it but it's true sadly. That might be a technique issue. It's why I wish I had a physical teacher to notice what I am doing wrong because there are occasions I don't know what I am doing wrong and I end up having to do trial and error with what fingers or positioning my hand to get it right so I can prepare to do the next move for the next chord say.
Is there any way I can make my fingers more flexible on a keyboard board
Is it a good idea to buy a used digital piano? 🤔🎹
Probably depends on the condition 😄
Maybe try before you buy!
Waoo a great vidio
Patrik Pietschmann please XD
I'd love that😮
This is soooo confusing
Dont give up right away or youll never learn
Lock in bro it took me 1 and a half month mastering sheet music and sight reading spending all of my free time on practicing.
@@Introspaciousyou mastered sight reading in 1.5 month?
why are there no sharp/flat keys between B and C, and between E and F? anyone have a good answer?
Because a scale in 12TET goes like: Whole step, Whole step, half step, Whole step, Whole step, Whole step, half step. So the piano is just laid out as the major scale would look like.
I am playing the piano for 10 years now. I gave up on sheet music 2-3 years ago. Im only using these youtube tutorials with the falling keys. Never had more fun playing piano. Sheet music just isn't for me. It took me so much longer to learn with sheet music.
How good are you?
I'd love for you to react to Phyxinon, he (or she?) makes highly virtuosic covers of game/anime songs!
atonal music🙂
Slooooow doooown!!!
There’s settings for that on RUclips 😊
@@matticawood Just trying to help the creator to improve his video for beginners. I thought that is who the video is for.
I think it’s a personal preference, my videos were at one time much slower, however the faster paced videos tend to be what the majority of people prefer judging by the analytics. However, rewatching or slowing the video down allows everyone to get the information they need from it 😊
@@matticawood i tried slowing down the video, you just sound drunk
I can play grade 7 pieces on synthesias but I still can’t read music 😂
why so fast
More! More! More…! prety please
Great nice fast non stop talking.