Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles (gentle piano music) - Hey, everybody. Tim here, and back to some more YouTube videos for you. Today we are talking about note reading again. I know we talked about it long, long ago when I first started making YouTube videos. One of the first couple of videos I made was how to read music, but this time we're going to talk a little bit, a lot more, actually, about ledger lines. Let's just get started, see what we have, and I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about. Now, let me bring this up really quick. Make sure everything is centered and all right. I will post a link to this. If I forget, please let me know. We've learned how to read music on the staff. At least you should by now. I recommend you watch this video after you've seen maybe the first five to ten piano lesson videos that I've made in the past, the "Learn to Play Piano" series. We've learned how to read music on the staff, and we've had some practice with that. Now what we need to do is we need to figure out how to read the notes that are not on the staff, and we need these things called ledger lines. As you can see here, this C has its own ledger line. Let me see how big I can make this. Okay, so we have our ledger lines. What ledger lines are for is to keep track of where the note is off the staff. Kind of said that already, but you can have more than one ledger line, and basically what it is is you're extending the staff either down or up to account for notes that just don't fit on the staff. We have E here, our bottom line, so there's no ledger lines involved yet. I just wanted to start at E in the treble clef to show you something. There's E, and then there's actually a space right below that line. That's a space, and that is right before E in the alphabet also known as D. So if this E is right here, this E, sorry, is right here on the piano, this D must be right next to it down that way. So, the further down a note goes on the staff the further down that way it's going to be. Then you have middle C. We kind of know that one already. It's the one on the first ledger line below the treble clef. It's also on the first ledger line above the bass clef, but we'll talk about that in just a minute. We have E, D, C, and then B right below it. So this is the B right below middle C. It can go down a little bit further, but G is probably one of the lowest notes you'll find on the treble clef. Now I've seen some Es and things like that, but for today, we're only going to go down to G. So our first ledger line, C. Going down is B, sorry, the other way. And then you go down to A which is two ledger lines below the staff on the treble clef. You can memorize these just like you did to memorize middle C, it's the first ledger line below the staff. This one is two, so this is the A before that. Then if you go down one more note, this is a space right before that line. That's down here at the G, and then here we go back up. We have G, A, B, C, D, and then back up the E to the line. Just know that ledger lines are used to extend the staff. You can memorize where notes are off of the staff if you want, or you can count from notes you do know. Say you had this first space here below the staff and you didn't know what that was. You could find the closest note you do know, which would probably be this E or middle C, and then you can see that it's right between those two. You can figure it out that way, or if you want to memorize it you can memorize that. Obviously E's the bottom line, D's that space right below that line. C has its own ledger line, the first line below the staff of treble clef. B is right below that in the space right below that line. Then each time we get to a line that's lower, we need to add a ledger line, so we have A there on the second ledger line. Then you go down to G, so if you had F, that would be three ledger lines down, and then you can go back up. I'm just kind of showing you how it goes down, and it goes back up back to E where we first started. Ledger lines above the teble clef, let me make sure this is centered okay. Here we have the top line. We know that that is F already, and that F is right here. Because it's two Fs above middle C, the first F above middle C is that first space, and then you have that top line. That's right here. Now we have the first space above the treble clef, and that's the G. You go up one more, that gives you A. Another one. The second space above the staff is B. Then you have the second line above the staff, the C. Then you have three spaces above is D, and then three lines above is E. You can memorize where each of these are. You can say, "Okay, I know G's the first space." A, B, C, D, E. There's another thing you want to do to make sure you're really solid on these, and I'll show you that in a couple of minutes, but I just want to show you now the bass clef, how the bass clef, the bottom... line there is G. We know that. That's two Gs below middle C because the first G above middle C is that top space. We have G, and then the first space below the staff is F. The first ledger line on the bass clef is E. Careful, a lot of students will switch this E with middle C. They'll think it's middle see, but careful. That only it applies for the treble clef. Then you go down to D, the second space below the staff. Two lines below the staff is C, and then you can go down further to B, and then D, E, F, G from there. Just memorize where they are on the staff. G is the bottom line, F is the first space below that. E is the first ledger line. Try to recognize them based on what space or line they're on below the staff or above the staff. Now we have ledger lines that can be above the bass clef. We have A right here. That A is right below middle C because we know this note as middle C. The note in between is B. That's the first space past middle C. The second space is D, second line is E. Second space is F, and then you have G, which is the 3rd line coming back down as you can see right there. I will post an image of this, a link to it in the description of this video, so take a look at that. Now I'm going to show you, other than trying to memorize these by looking at it.