A mnemonic is a sentence you recite from the bottom of the stave upwards, and it costs about a second. A landmark is a note you simply know, and everything within a third of it is then one or two steps away. Fast reading is landmarks and intervals; the sentences are scaffolding you are meant to take down.
Same sound, four positions. A clef is not a code to crack — it just says which line is which pitch, and everything else follows from the ladder.
| Note | Name | Beats | Per bar |
|---|
Each row is half the one above it, all the way down — which is the whole system. A dot adds half the note's own value, so a dotted minim is 2 + 1 = 3 beats.
Five lines and four spaces make nine rungs, each the next letter of the alphabet. A note’s height is its letter; a clef names one rung and the rest follow by counting.
Each note gets one number counting letters, not semitones: C4 is 28, D4 29, E4 30. Treble puts E4 on the bottom line, bass puts G2.
Sharps and flats change pitch without moving position, so a key signature says “every F is sharp” once and the notes stay where they were.
Sharps run F C G D A E B (flats backwards), each placed by going up a fifth if that stays on the stave, otherwise down a fourth.
Every Good Boy Deserves Football gets you reading this week and slows you down for years: reciting from the bottom line is serial, so finding the fourth space means counting four things. Quick readers know perhaps five notes on sight (the note the clef is named after, the middle one, the outside lines) and read everything else as an interval from the nearest one. The drill records which notes you are slow on, because a note answered correctly in three seconds is a note you counted.
To keep notes on the stave instead of a pile of ledger lines. A cello sits badly in treble and a flute in bass; alto and tenor exist because the viola and the trombone sit between. The clef is chosen so the music lands in the middle: a printing decision as much as a musical one.
The clefs put different pitches on the lines, and middle C is deliberately the note between the treble and bass staves. On a grand stave it is one ledger line under the treble or above the bass, the same note from either side. In the alto clef it is the middle line, which is where the C-clef’s centre points.
Position-only reading works on one instrument and collapses when you change clef, transpose, or try to tell anybody what you played. Naming is slower to learn and does not collapse. The drill names notes; the fretboard is on the scales page.
Each note carries a weight that rises when you miss it or take long, and falls when you get it quickly; the next note is drawn against the weights. It is the crudest spaced repetition and still much better than random. The ladder colours show your accuracy per note: usually thinnest on the ledger lines and the notes just past the ones the mnemonic covers.
To keep notes on the stave instead of on a pile of ledger lines. A cello's range sits badly in the treble clef and a flute's sits badly in the bass, and the alto and tenor clefs exist because the viola and the trombone sit between the two. The clef is chosen so the music lands in the middle, which is a printing decision as much as a musical one.
Because the clefs put different pitches on the lines, and middle C is deliberately the note that falls between the treble and bass staves. On a grand stave it is a single ledger line under the treble or above the bass — the same note, written from either side. In the alto clef it is the middle line, which is what the C-clef's centre points at.
Both, but they are different skills and they fail differently. Position-only reading works on one instrument and collapses when you change clef, transpose, or try to talk to anybody about what you played. Naming is slower to learn and does not collapse. The drill here names notes; the fretboard is on the scales page.
Because an even shuffle spends most of its time on what you already know. Each note carries a weight that rises when you miss it or take a long time over it and falls when you get it quickly, and the next note is drawn against those weights. It is the crudest form of spaced repetition and it is still much better than random.
Your own accuracy on each note, once you have answered it a few times. It is a map of where your reading is thin — which is usually not where you would guess, and is usually the ledger lines and the notes just past the ones the mnemonic covers.
Standard Western five-line staff notation, twelve-tone equal temperament, and scientific pitch notation where middle C is C4 — that last one is a convention, and some software calls the same note C3 or C5. Note values are named in British English (semibreve, minim, crotchet) with the American names given alongside. Nothing here covers percussion clefs, transposing instruments, or the several hundred years during which none of this was standard.
This page has changed in 121 archived releases, but each of those was a site-wide pass, so none is attributable to this tool on its own and none is listed here. That is not a claim that the tool never changed — a release that reworked many pages at once may well have altered this one too. The changelog has them.