Note identifier quiz

How to use it

• Choose treble clef, bass clef, or both. Both is considerably harder and considerably more useful.
• Set the range. Start inside the staff, then add ledger lines once you are consistently fast.
• Timed mode reports notes per minute; untimed mode reports accuracy only.
• Answer with the on-screen keyboard, your computer keyboard, or a connected MIDI keyboard.

What to aim for

Speed matters more than it might seem. Reading music at tempo requires recognition to be automatic, and anything that requires conscious counting up from a mnemonic is too slow to sustain in real playing.

Use landmarks, not mnemonics

Every Good Boy Deserves Football works, and it forces you to count from the bottom line every time. Fluent readers use anchor notes instead and read everything else as a distance from the nearest anchor.

• Middle C, on its ledger line between the two staves.
• Treble G, the line the treble clef spiral encircles.
• Bass F, the line between the bass clef’s two dots.

If you find one clef much weaker than the other, drill it alone rather than mixed, and read it as its own system rather than translating from the clef you know. Reading bass and treble clef together explains why translation stalls you.

Read more

For notation from scratch, see how to read sheet music. Instrument-specific: piano, guitar, and violin.