> I can recognize C,D,E,F,G pretty instantly because of their position relative to the bottom bar of the treble clef, but as soon as you start getting above that, I start having to count spaces relative to a known position, because everything internal looks like a big jumble.
It was the same for me until I really started practicing sight reading (there are special books for that). Just like learning the alphabet and how to read as a child, it took a couple of years of doing sight reading many days a week before I got good enough to sight read musical pieces. Becoming fluent at reading takes a lot of practice. And like learning to read and write in any language, it's best to do it at the same time while you are learning to speak and understand.
This was the level I was at, which is why I wrote this software to begin with, it started out as a re-write of pianobooster, which is a very neat program with a bunch of hard to fix basic ideas. Now, about a year later it is very far ahead of pianobooster, and I've learned to sightread much better than I ever could have achieved with pianobooster.
I started learning piano just over a year ago and picked up reading sheet music decently in an extremely short amount of time.
The gaps is the treble clef are
| F | A | C | E |
The bass clef is the same but shifted down one gap (and the highest note is G)
F | A | C | E | G |
And then middle C is, well, C. Just remembering that FACE goes in two places you get:
bass clef (C) treble clef
F | A | C | E | G | | | F | A | C | E |
And from that it's easy to go to the closest note and the count up/down one note and gradually memorize more. This was, at least to me, a drop dead simple way to memorize where everything goes.
This is a little better, but don't do this. You still need to calculate what are the notes outside of F A C E. Just memorize each note independently, it may take longer but it is much easier after that. If you continue using clutches like this, you'll forever have to do the translation in your head, which takes a lot of time and effort.
It was the same for me until I really started practicing sight reading (there are special books for that). Just like learning the alphabet and how to read as a child, it took a couple of years of doing sight reading many days a week before I got good enough to sight read musical pieces. Becoming fluent at reading takes a lot of practice. And like learning to read and write in any language, it's best to do it at the same time while you are learning to speak and understand.