Before you start
Can You Read Music Well Enough for Pro Member?
This page settles one thing: whether you already read well enough to start Pro Member's courses — and it takes about a minute.
- The one requirement — you can already work out a simple piece from a score on your own.
- What this isn't — not a grade, not a pass/fail test; nothing is scored, recorded, or sent anywhere.
- How to use it — four ways to check; pick the one that fits you, and stop there.
Check 1 — your method book
If you're working through a method book, where you are in it is your answer.
Find your book below — at or past that point is where these courses start from.
| Method | You're reading well enough once you reach… |
|---|---|
| Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course, Book 1 | About halfway through, or later |
| John Thompson's Adult Piano Course, Book One | About halfway through |
| Hal Leonard Adult Piano Method | Near the end of Book 1, or the start of Book 2 |
| Faber Adult Piano Adventures, All-in-One Book 1 | Around the midpoint to later part of Book 1 |
| Faber Piano Adventures, Level 1 | End of Level 1, into Level 2A |
| Alfred's Basic Piano Library, Level 1B | Through Level 1B |
| Bastien Piano Basics, Level 1 | Through Level 1, into Level 2 |
| Hal Leonard Student Piano Library, Piano Lessons | Into Book 2 |
| John Thompson's Easiest Piano Course | Part 3 onward |
| John Thompson's Modern Course, First Grade Book | Through the whole book |
| Michael Aaron Piano Course, Grade One | Through Grade One |
| John W. Schaum Piano Course | Around the B (Blue) book |
These pace differently on purpose, so the same position means different things from book to book — it's a locating device, not a ranking.
Check 2 — your app
| Platform | What it tells us |
|---|---|
| Piano Marvel | Method/SASR track: yes — use the table above. Boot Camp: try the score instead. |
| Hoffman Academy | Unit 1 = staff reading not started yet. Past Unit 2 = try the score. |
| Simply Piano | Teaches reading, but you can finish it by ear — try the score instead. |
| Playground Sessions | Same story — teaches reading, but finishable without it. Try the score. |
If your app isn't listed here, that's not a judgement on it — the score below will tell you instead.
Check 3 — pieces you already play
- Thompson's First Grade Studies
- Bach's Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach — the G major Minuet, the C major Musette, or a neighbouring piece
- The opening pieces in Bartók's Mikrokosmos
- Walter Carroll's Scenes at a Farm or Tunes from Nature
- The opening numbers in Schumann's Album for the Young, Op. 68
- Loeschhorn's Children's Studies, Op. 181
- The first pieces in Kabalevsky
Recognise yourself in any of these, playing at around that level? That's your rung.
Then you're in the right place — this is the reading the courses start from. Pro Member is ready whenever you are.
Check 4 — play a short score
Look at it for a moment, then play it through once, slowly, hands together. It doesn't need to be up to speed or sound good. Stopping and starting is fine.
Five short scores below, easiest to hardest — pick by the label, not by how they look. Any one answers the question just as well; you only need to try one.
No sharps or flats, quarter notes
No sharps or flats, one hand holds while the other moves
No sharps or flats, a running right hand
One flat, hands stay put
One sharp, the line travels
Whichever one you played, the question is the same: which of these is true?
- I got to the end. (Slowly, with stops — that counts.)
- I got stuck working out which note is which.
You read it — and slowly, with stops, is exactly what we asked for. That is the reading these courses start from. Pro Member is ready whenever you are.
Working each note out, one at a time, is what reading looks like before it's automatic — everyone gets there.
Reading notes from scratch is the one thing these courses don't teach — they start one step after it.
Hoffman Academy's first unit — twenty lessons — has no staff notation; the staff arrives at Lesson 21. A real, ordinary stage.
Real next step:
- A method book
- A teacher
- An app
Any of those is right — just earlier than these courses start. The door stays open.
One more thing worth knowing while you work on your reading: technique and reading don't have to happen one after another — you can start both at the same time. Super Fingers is a technique book, not a reading method, and it's built to run alongside whatever you use to learn notes, from day one. If you'd like a smaller step first, our free technique exercises are a good place to start.