Notalo › Learn

Learn

Guides and articles written from the work of building and running Notalo: how to read the staff, how music recognition works and where it fails, how to use letter notes without getting stuck on them, and how we decide what is free to publish.

Guides

• How to read sheet music — Staff, clefs, note names, rhythm, key signatures — every example labeled.
• Treble clef notes — Every note on the treble staff, labeled, with mnemonics and a drill.
• Bass clef notes — Every note on the bass staff, labeled, and the two-letters-lower trick.

Articles

• Piano chords for beginners: C, F, G and A minor, and how to move between them — The four chords that accompany most simple songs, shown on the keyboard with finger numbers: how to build C, F, G and A minor, the inversions that let your hand barely move, and a ten-minute practice routine. (2026-10-28)
• Piano keyboard notes chart: every key named, and how to find middle C — A labeled chart of the piano keys from C3 to B5 with every white and black key named, octave numbers, and the two-and-three black-key pattern that lets you find any note in seconds on any piano or keyboard. (2026-10-25)
• How to photograph sheet music so a scanner can read it — Seven things that decide whether a phone photo of sheet music converts cleanly: light, angle, distance, shadows, page curl, resolution and file type. From the failures we see every day. (2026-10-10)
• How optical music recognition works, and why photos are harder than PDFs — What happens between uploading a page of sheet music and getting the notes back: staff finding, symbol detection, pitch rules, and where the classic engines like Audiveris and newer neural models differ. (2026-10-10)
• Sheet music to MIDI: what the file can tell you and what it cannot — A MIDI file made from a page of sheet music carries pitches and lengths, not tempo, dynamics or feel. How to read one, what breaks in conversion, and how to use it to practise. (2026-10-10)
• A four-week plan for learning piano with letter notes, and then taking the letters away — Letter notes get you playing on day one; the risk is never moving past them. A week-by-week plan using the free demo songs on this site, with the letters fading out as the staff becomes familiar. (2026-10-10)
• Key signatures explained with real songs: one sharp, one flat, two sharps — What the sharps and flats after the clef mean, how to read them in seconds, and which demo songs on this site are in which key, so you can hear the difference instead of memorizing a table. (2026-10-10)
• Is this song public domain? How we decide what to publish — The rules of thumb we use before putting a song on this site: composer death dates, publication before 1930, the separate copyright on arrangements and lyrics, and the famous traps like Happy Birthday and Carol of the Bells. (2026-10-10)
• Chord symbols for beginners: what C, G7 and Am mean above the bar — The green letters above each bar on our scores are chord symbols. What they mean, how to play a left hand from them, how Notalo works them out from the notes, and why it sometimes writes Cmaj7 where you expected C. (2026-10-10)

New articles are added every few weeks. Questions that would make a good one: tell us.