If you've been defeated by music notation in the past, give this embarrassingly simple method a try.

I've tried to learn to read music repeatedly over the years, but always got stuck trying to figure out which line or space a note is on. It’s not a matter of not knowing which note goes with which line. ( I know Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, FACE, Grizzly Bears Don't Fly Airplanes and All Cows Eat Grass.) The problem is not knowing which line I’m looking at. Adding color actually helps to sort it all out.

Step 1: What You Need

What you need:

Sheet music - your own copy. The musicians in your life will be much happier if you don't do this to their scores.

Six or seven colored pencils of easily distinguished colors.

Test how well you can see them in the lighting where you play. If two colors are difficult to tell apart, try using a clearly darker shade for one of them.

Prismacolor pencils are soft and fairly transparent.

Time required: it depends on how long the piece of music is.

Step 2: Choose Your Colors and Go for It

Assign one color to each note ABCDEFG

If you only use six colors, you will have one note left (for me that's G) that gets no color. If you can distinguish seven different colors easily, you could color all the notes.

Once you figure out what color assignments work for you, don't change them.

It helps to write the letters in their given colors at the top of the sheet of music the first few times

Color all the A's one color, all the B's another and so on.

That's it.

If you don't know what a piece sounds like, the process is a little like doing a Dot to Dot picture. Once the score is colored, you can try it out to hear what you’ve got. You may even find that you recognize what you're playing. Bravo!