Beginners on most musical instruments can spend long hours learning simply how to produce a pleasing sound. Beginner pianists, on the other hand, have only to push a piano key and they are rewarded with a tuneful, bell-like sound. In fact, an upright piano usually has 88 keys. Lucky pianists! So many pitch-perfect, beautiful sounds, so easily available ‘at the touch of a button’, literally!
And that’s not all. Most other instrumentalists can only try to imagine in their mind’s eye the range of pitches (‘tessitura’) their instrument can produce. The iconic piano keyboard design provides a very helpful visual guide to all the notes a pianist can play.
But… the piano’s immense pitch range makes learning to play the piano and, particularly, learning to read piano music unusually challenging.
Beginner pianists often find themselves feeling like they’ve plunged into an overwhelming musical ‘deep end’. There are so many things to understand and process simultaneously – two confusingly mirror-image hands, so many fingers and thumbs, two lines of music (one for each hand), usually pitch-coded differently (i.e. treble clef and bass clef)!
If standard piano notation looks complicated – off-putting even – that’s because it’s full of information! No wonder beginner pianists with a good musical ear often prefer to copy what they hear rather than to translate hieroglyphics on a page. Even proficient pianists who seem to be reading music are often happier to play by ear and from memory than from sheet music. This seems a shame. So much good music is written down.
When children learn to read words, tutor books simplify the reading process because this makes learning to read easier and more fun… and so more likely to succeed. No Notes simplifies the baffling complexity of ordinary piano music for the same reason.
No Notes musical notation shows fingering rather than pitch. This type of notation is called tablature or ‘tab’. No Notes piano tab is very simple. There is a ‘keyboard map’, showing where the two hands go, and a ‘song chart’, based on standard piano notation, showing which fingers to use and when to use them. The right and left hand parts are written above and below a single line. Rhythmic details are indicated by proportional horizontal spacing of notes, as well as by bar lines. It really is easy to follow. If you can count to five you are ready for No Notes.
No Notes beginners soon learn to make musical phrases using all the fingers and thumbs of both hands. In fact, a surprising degree of musical complexity is possible with No Notes piano tab and beginners can rapidly develop independence between their two hands and find themselves able to play not only favourite melodies but also a variety of catchy, rhythmic, bluesy riffs and grooves.
No Notes beginners learn to read music from the start – because it’s easy and it’s fun. And because No Notes piano tab is based on standard piano notation – No Notes beginners are soon ready and motivated to move on to the fascinating complexities of standard piano notation.
See examples of No Notes piano music here.