Abstract: A method of teaching students to understand, read, and play sheet music. The method includes first teaching students rote understanding of musical notes and progressing to a structural understanding of notes on a musical staff. The teaching method is conducted in a series of five teaching steps and may apply to the teaching of sheet music for any musical instrument or voice instruction. The method is particularly useful for teaching groups of students to read music. The method focuses on building a student's understanding of the scale system of music by teaching the student to play a small portion of notes on a scale through repetition, implementation of a specialized two-line scale, and hand signals. After the student has learned small portions of a scale, the student learns other small sections of the scale until all notes on the musical scale have been learned. The portions are then combined to reinforce the students understanding of the scale as a whole.