How to read the treble clef
The treble clef is the upper staff of piano music, mostly your right hand. Its five lines and four spaces each stand for one white key, and you read them fastest not by reciting a rhyme but by knowing a few landmark notes on sight and stepping from them.
The lines and the spaces
From the bottom up, the lines are E, G, B, D and F and the spaces are F, A, C and E. Each step up the staff, from a line to the space just above it, is the next white key to the right.
The landmark notes
Learn these 4 by sight first. Every other note is a step or a skip from one of them.
- C4, middle C: on the first ledger line below the staff
- G4, the note the clef curls round: the treble clef is a G clef: on the second line up
- C5, treble C: in the third space up
- C6, high C: on the second ledger line above the staff
The trap
The two clefs put different notes in the same places. A note on the bottom line is E in the treble clef but G in the bass clef, and the same holds all the way up: each treble clef note is two letters below the bass clef note in the same place. If you learned one clef first, the old names will come to mind; that's the habit the drill breaks.
Now read them. A drill of the 13 notes in this guide: play each card on a MIDI keyboard or the keys on screen as soon as you can read it. Every answer is timed and goes on your reading map.
Start the drill