These Music Note Flashcards are a useful and convenient way to help your young musician review notes on the keyboard and staff.

Pages should be printed front-to-back. Use card stock for best results.

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What’s in each packet of music note flashcards?

LEVEL 1

Letter names on one side, keyboard on the other
Notes going up, notes going down, and repeating notes on one side, note heads with no staff on the other

LEVEL 2 – 3

Letter names on one side, grand staff treble notes on the other
Letter names on one side, grand staff bass notes on the other

LEVEL 4

Grand staff guide notes on one side, labeled grand staff guide notes on the other
Letter names on one side, grand staff high treble notes on the other
Letter names on one side, grand staff low bass notes on the other

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What are music note flashcards?

Music note flashcards are a tool that many piano students use to speed up their learning as they connect each note’s letter name with its position on the staff and on the keyboard. Students can use these music note flashcards either on their own or with a partner to practice quickly finding and naming notes.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using music note flashcards?

Music note flashcards have a lot of advantages for students who are learning how to read music. With flashcards, it is easy to pick out a few notes to focus on and practice them until they are learned before going on to other notes. Flashcards make repetition easier. There are several ways to use flashcards, including games that can make learning the notes more fun.

The only way piano note flashcards could be a disadvantage is if they are used exclusively as the only sight reading practice a student gets. Be sure to take the skills learned by using piano note flashcards and apply them to reading actual sheet music. The Hoffman Academy Sight Reading Trainer books are an excellent resource for beginner sight reading practice.

How do you explain music notes to kids?

When teaching kids about music notes, it’s best to start by letting them experience the sound each note makes. Let children explore the piano by playing the notes. Ask them questions, such as, “What’s the difference between the sound of these two notes?” or “How do the notes on this end of the piano sound different from the notes on the other end?” Help them discover the concept that the notes are placed on the piano in order of pitch, with low notes on the left, gradually getting higher in pitch as you move toward the right.

The next step is to teach children that every note on the piano has a letter name. These letter names make up the musical alphabet. A fun way to help children learn the musical alphabet is with Mr. Hoffman’s “Piano Street.” Watch this series of three videos to give your child an easy way to remember the names of all the notes on the keyboard: Finding C, D, & E, Finding F & G, and Finding A& B.

Once your child has learned the musical alphabet and knows the names of notes on the piano, it’s time to introduce music notation. Each note on the piano has a special place of its own on the musical staff. This can be one of the most challenging parts of learning music, but recognizing a note by its position on the staff is a very important skill. Let your child know that it can take some time to learn the notes on the musical staff, but that eventually it will be as easy for them as reading their favorite book.

How can I help my child memorize music notes?

Music note flashcards are a great way to help your child memorize music notes, but there are some shortcuts that can help make memorizing even faster.

To memorize the letter names of the notes on a piano, it’s great to have a memory aid for getting started. Mr. Hoffman’s “Piano Street” is a fun story that can help kids remember the letter name of each note on the keyboard.

How do you teach music notes to read?

Memorizing the letter names of notes on a staff can seem overwhelming. There are five lines and four spaces per staff, and two staves in the grand staff, for a total of eighteen note positions to memorize! And that’s not counting the ledger lines, which can extend above or below the staff as far as a composer wants to write them!

To make all of this easier, at Hoffman Academy we recommend memorizing a few guide notes. These are special notes that are easy to spot on the staff and once they’re learned, it’s easy to find the other notes that are close to them. To learn about guide notes, watch this lesson video.

How do you practice piano notes?

When practicing piano notes, it’s best to focus on a few notes and only one aspect of those notes at a time. For example, you might want to start with the notes C, D, and E, and work on matching their letter names to the keys on the piano. To do this, you could take the C, D, and E piano note flashcards from the Unit 1 card set and place them in any order on your piano’s music stand. Play the note that goes with the letter name of the first card, then turn the card over to check if you played it correctly. Move on to the next piano note flashcard. Once you’ve been able to work through all three piano note flashcards several times without making any mistakes, choose another three notes, perhaps E, F, and G.

Use this same process to practice matching letter names and staff positions, or staff positions and notes on the keyboard. Be patient and work on a little at a time. Remember, practicing is repeating a task correctly many, many times until it becomes natural.

Once you’ve learned a set of piano note flashcards, find a practice partner and have them time you in a speed run. Place all the cards in a stack. Start the timer and have your partner show you one card at a time. When you play the correct note or say the correct letter name, have your partner show you the next card. How fast can you get through the stack of piano note flashcards? Try again and see if you can improve your time.

We hope you enjoy your piano note flashcards from Hoffman Academy! For more great music learning downloads, check out the links below: