Written by The mnemonic you were taught might be holding you back from reading music fluently.
Ever struggle to unscrew something only to realize you’re making it worse?
Well, Righty-Tighty Lefty-Loosey might be the mnemonic for you!
A mnemonic, or mnemonic device, is a kind of memory aid, often a word or phrase, that makes it easier to memorize and retrieve information.
In the case of Righty-Tighty Lefty-Loosey, it’s a reminder that most screws, bolts, and jar lids have to be turned counterclockwise if you want to get them off.
Never Eat Shredded Wheat is often used to remember the cardinal directions. Each word’s first letter corresponds to one of the compass points going clockwise from the top: North, East, South, and West.
In the world of music, many students are taught some version of Every Good Boy Does Fine to remember the notes that correspond to the lines of the treble staff (E, G, B, D, F).
FACE is often used to remember the notes that correspond to the spaces (F, A, C, E).
So if mnemonics are such great memory aids, why are they actually terrible for reading music? Lots of reasons! Let me count the ways.
On the piano, the treble staff represents the higher keyboard notes, usually played with the right hand.
But what about the lower notes that are played with the left hand? Well, there’s a different staff for that. It’s called the bass staff.
The problem, which trips a lot of people up, is that the notes that correspond to the lines and spaces of the treble staff are not the same as those of the bass staff! Because of that, you need to learn two more mnemonic devices.
While you use Every Good Boy Does Fine to remember the lines of the treble staff, you need to use Good Boys Do Fine Always to remember the lines of the bass staff (G, B, D, F, A).
You use FACE to remember the spaces of the treble staff, but need to use All Cows Eat Grass (A, C, E, G) to remember the spaces of the bass staff.
In this case, you’ll notice that the C note highlighted below is on the third space of the treble staff, but it’s on the second space of the bass staff. This is all too easy to mix up. (You might have also noticed that FACE doesn’t have a word corresponding to each letter, which only adds to the confusion.)
What this means is that you have to memorize four different mnemonic devices for eighteen different notes!
And while some people seem to manage with this convoluted system, my brain kept short-circuiting every time I sat down in front of a piece of sheet music. If I were ever going to learn to read music fluently, Every Good Boy had to go.
The mnemonic system forces your brain through a multi-step process to read a single note.
Let’s say you want to read the blue note below.
First, you’d have to remember which of the four mnemonic devices to pull out depending on whether the note is in the treble or bass clef, and whether it’s on a line or space.
In this example, the note is on a line on the bass staff, so you’d use Good Boys Do Fine Always.
Next, you have to count up the lines of the staff, starting with Good, then Boys, Do, Fine, Always. Then you extract the first letter of Always, which is A.
Finally, you have to translate that note to the corresponding key on your instrument and play it. Now all you have to do is decode the next note, then the next one, and the next one, and so on, at a snail’s pace.
Instead of seeing a note and just playing it, mnemonics force you to jump through linguistic hoops. And with your brain so fully occupied, you’re often not really hearing what you’re playing. It’s no wonder many students get frustrated and give up.
To be fair, the idea is that Every Good Boy Does Fine will naturally fall away and playing music will be as easy as riding a bike. This might be true for some people, especially those with brains wired for rote memorization, but for many—myself included—the system is like training wheels that never come off.
Not only is it cumbersome to decode every single note, you have to keep switching back and forth between different mnemonic devices.
Let’s say you want to read these three notes, from left to right.
Well, the first note is on a line of the treble staff, so you’d choose the Every Good Boy Does Fine mnemonic from your choices below.
Luckily, the note is on the first line, so you can quickly decode the E note from Every and play it.
However, the next note is on a space, so now you have to switch to FACE and count up to A.
The next note is on a line, so you have to switch back to Every Good Boy Does Fine and count out E, G, B, D.
Don’t forget, you have to simultaneously do the same thing with the left hand using two different mnemonics!
This constant switching puts a heavy burden on working memory and attention. Instead of learning to see the relationship between notes, you’re forced to ping-pong between mnemonic devices. This slows down the reading process and sucks the joy out of playing.
The mnemonic method splits the treble and bass staves into two unrelated puzzles. As we saw earlier, the C note is on the third space of the treble staff, but it’s on the second space of the bass staff.
This is confusing.
However, there’s another way to look at it. When the treble and bass staves are placed on top of each other—the way you see it in sheet music—you get what’s called a grand staff.
When you look at these same two Cs from this unified perspective, a lovely symmetry appears—now both Cs are on the third space counting outward from the center.
Much easier to remember!
There are many more symmetries like this one hidden within the grand staff—though you wouldn’t know it by using mnemonics.
Mnemonics make you memorize eighteen seemingly unrelated notes (the blue notes in the diagram below), but that only covers a small part of an eighty-eight note keyboard.
Notes that appear above or below either staff (the red notes) are beyond the reach of this method.
Teachers don’t all use the same mnemonics, which can cause confusion.
While Every Good Boy Does Fine is common, some instructors might use:
Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge
Empty Garbage Before Dad Flips
Elvis’ Guitar Broke Down Friday
Everyone Gets Balloons During Fiestas
The lack of consistency across teaching methods can lead to frustration and hinder progress, as students must constantly adapt to new phrases rather than focusing on reading and playing music fluently.
Whether you’re a young or adult beginner just learning piano notes for the first time, or someone who’s been struggling with sight reading and music theory longer than you’d like to admit, you’re probably not the problem—the method is.
Mnemonics add unnecessary cognitive steps between seeing a note and playing it, which can make reading music feel impossible, especially for people like myself who have struggled with neurodivergent learning challenges. So why are they still the go-to method? Beats me, but thankfully things are changing.
Enter Landmark Notes
In simplest terms, landmark notes (a.k.a. “reference notes,” “anchor notes,” or “guide notes”) are a handful of notes that act as guideposts to other notes, a faster method that works with your brain’s natural pattern-recognition abilities rather than against them.
Instead of memorizing eighteen notes across four mnemonic devices—which only gives you access to the blue notes in the diagram below—you only need to memorize nine landmarks, which unlocks the entire grand staff and beyond.
And since landmark notes are visually symmetrical, like in the C note example below, they’re also easier to commit to memory.
Landmarks were such a game changer, I felt the urge to shout it from the rooftops. So I decided to create the course I wish I had, before I spent so long needlessly beating myself up for not getting it.
This course is based on a unique, modified landmark system. Whereas most other landmark courses stop at nine notes, this one goes further, adding bonus landmark extensions and spaced repetition flashcards to be sure the notes actually stick.
When you learn to see the staff as a unified whole, it stops being a puzzle to solve and becomes a language you simply read—one that finally gets out of the way so you can lose yourself in the music.