Reading music is crucial to playing and their is no shortcut. You can use flashcards and memorize the notes, but not know where the notes are on the piano. You can easily memorize keys on the piano, but not be able to read music.

Reading Music:

Look at the sheet music. The sheet music will be written on a Grand Staff. The top part of the Grand Staff is the Treble Clef (Right Hand) then there is a big white space OR words to the song and then the bottom part is the Bass Clef (Left Hand). Remember part above the lyrics is the treble clef, part below the lyrics is the bass clef. Notice that the top and bottom have black dots on the page with lines going up along side some of the black dots. Ignore the lines beside the black dots and and concentrate on whether there is line going through the black dots. The black dots should either have a line running through it or no line running through meaning it is in a space.

Grand Staff
Look at the picture and you will see a Grand Staff. The symbol on the top is called a Treble Clef (AKA G Clef). This is the one that you will read to play the notes for the right hand. The symbol on the bottom is called a Bass Clef (AKA F Clef). This is the one that you will read to play the left hand.

Grand Staff
Now let's start with the Treble Clef. Starting at the first line (which would be the first line on the bottom of the 5 lines for the treble clef) going up you will see an E, the second line will be the G, then B, then, D and finally F. You can use the saying "Every Good Boy Does Fine." For the spaces, remember to work from the bottom up, you will see the letters f a c e. I use the saying "Space spells face".

Now let's look at the Bass Clef. Starting from the bottom up read the lines in the Bass Clef as G B D F A and the spaces in the Bass Clef are A C E G B

To help you memorize them you can use the saying "Good Boys Do Fine Always" to remember the lines and "All Cows Eat Grass Bananas" to remember the spaces. The b (bananas) will be sitting on the very top line with no line going over the top of it.