Well, not actually wrong, but in a hard way.

Lots of people, including me, are learning music by themselves, using all sorts of online tutorials. This is a fun and a great way to do it, until you face sight-reading.

The best you can be offered is advices to remember all sorts of Every Good Boy Deserves Food rules. It may work fine until you’re facing ledger lines. Then repeat it all for bass clave.

Other tutorials propose you to learn or play some melodies. This is fun, but I’ll bet you’ll learn melodies before the containing notes.

Sight-reading seems to be a gatekeeper, that keeps centuries of music wisdom away from novices.

Some time ago I’ve found an interesting observation, that may sound obvious, but can help to split learning notes into several accessible steps. The notes are placed one by one, from lower to higher one. To learn notes effectively for both claves including ledger lines we need to see the staff as a whole, not tying to exact notes.

First of all, please notice that the note in the exact center is repeated outside first ledger lines: