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(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.
That doesn't really mean a whole lot to you.
Let's practice what we've learned.
What you want to do is you want to go to,
let me make sure I have this right as well.
You can't quite see it on the screen here,
but you want to go to
musictheory.net/exercises/note,
or if you type in "note reading exercises," I think,
into Google, it'll come up as one of the first ones.
Yeah, it's big enough.
You want to first go to,
up to the top right corner there's a,
you can barely see it here.
There's like a little menu there.
You want to go down,
and you want to...
Oh! Click treble range.
Well, first you want to,
actually, I would do it clef separate first.
Let's just work on treble clef here.
That's where you set your clef, the treble range.
You want to only practice notes that are
maybe two lines
below the staff up to that bottom line.
That will just get you to practice those,
one, two, three, four, five,
there's five notes in there.
I should've known that was a 5th right away,
but there's five notes in there
between those lines.
Oh, okay. You can see it, okay.
I was worried you couldn't see it at first.
Anyway, you select Menu.
You go to Treble Range.
There's the main menu here, Treble Range.
You select that, and then you drag down
to the areas we were talking about.
Instead of doing the ones all in the middle of the staff
which you know already very well,
you just want to practice a few of them
either on the bottom of the treble clef,
or the top of the treble clef,
or bottom of the bass clef, or top of the bass clef,
you do it this way.
You set the range kind of small,
but at the bottom of the clef or at the top of the clef.
Let's just try this
and see how we do.
New question, so here's our bottom line.
This was within the range we set
because it was the bottom line down.
You know that that's E, right?
There we go,
and then the new question is it's the first ledger line
below the staff.
Well, you should recognize that one.
If you don't, go back to the sheet, take a look,
and say, "Oh yeah, okay that's middle C
"with the treble clef."
So you'd hit C,
and try to find out where it is on the piano too.
That will help you as well.
This one is the first space below the staff,
and if you know that the bottom line is E,
the note right before that is D,
so you click on D.
Then you have two lines below the treble clef.
We talked about this earlier.
You can memorize what that is,
or you can count down from E or middle C
and know that that's A.
Before going on too long, let me do one more.
That first one below the staff is C again.
We know that one.
Like I said, try to play them on the keyboard.
That will help you not only identify them on the staff,
but identify them and have a pretty good idea in your head
where they are on the keyboard.
You want to do maybe 20 questions of each of these,
or 20 examples and go through these
for each part of the clef.
Now that we've done the bottom of the treble clef,
what do we need to do?
Logically,
I would say move the range.
Leave this first note here,
and then you want to move the range
up to two lines above the treble clef.
What that will do is that will make you to practice
those five notes in there really well
instead of practicing all the notes in the middle
that you already know so well.
You always want to focus down
on what the hardest thing is,
or what you need the most work on.
Here, we have two lines above the treble clef.
You may not have that memorized yet
since this is the first lesson we've talked about it,
but you can memorize that that is C
two Cs above middle C to be precise.
That's two ledger lines above the staff.
We put C there.
Or you can count from the top line of the staff, F.
You go G, A, B, and then all the way up to C.
You can count from there.
That's not as efficient.
I would go with trying to memorize where these are located.
Right away, I know that's a G
just because I've been doing this a long time,
but you could say, "Okay, I need to figure this out."
You can do it by referring to the chart,
or you go up to the top line that you do know, F,
and this is one note above F.
How about that?
You just put G,
and then here we have two lines.
We've talked about this already.
This is C right there.
Just go through these and you, over time,
after studying them for maybe a few days.
I suggest maybe you spend,
I don't know many minutes it'll take,
but do 20 questions on the bottom of the clef,
20 examples, I guess you could say
on the top of the clef.
After a while, maybe a week every day,
you will start to have a much better idea,
maybe even after only a day.
Some students pick this up really quick.
You'll have a much better idea
on where these notes are located
both on the keyboard and on the staff.
Now that we've done treble clef,
let's pretend we've done 40 examples.
We did 20 below the staff, 20 above the staff.
Now what do we need to do?
Well, you press Back here,
and then you go to Clefs,
and you select Bass Clef.
You can do treble clef and bass clef.
It will alternate between the two,
or you can just unselect treble clef
to work on the bass clef.
That's what I recommend in the beginning.
Then the bass range, you wanna practice the bottom first.
You went from two lines below the staff
up to the bottom line.
Then you go back,
and then it will start when you click in here.
Now we're in bass clef.
It's the first space below the staff.
You can memorize that that's F,
or you could count down from G.
Either method works pretty well.
I would memorize these though.
You have G, bottom line. You should know that.
Remember, Good Boys Deserve Fudge Always,
or Good Bunnies Deserve Fudge Always
if you've watched my videos.
That's G right here, two Gs below middle C.
We've talked about that note also in the lesson.
Here, we have two spaces below the staff.
That's D.
As you can tell as I go through these, watch.
That's G right away I know.
I have these memorized already.
That's C, so I don't have to think about it.
Because I've done this very same thing.
D.
There you go, and I wasn't just doing that to show off.
I'm just showing you that
that's how effective you want to get
at note reading above the staff and below the staff
using ledger lines.
Now that we did the bottom of the bass clef,
let's pretend we did 20 of those.
For time's sake, we won't do that today,
but now you want to move to the top of that bass clef
from that top line to two ledger lines above the staff.
You go back, you click back in here,
and it will do what you instructed it to.
So if you ever want to change what clef you're working on
or what part of the clef you're working on,
you click in this weird button here,
the middle button,
you'll see that there's another button on the side
you can't quite see,
and then you change what clef you want.
Careful if you select both of them,
it will randomize it.
Here we have the bass clef, that's D,
and then the next one's in treble clef.
After you've mastered them separately,
put them together, select both,
and go through it that way.
That's my practice suggestions,
but at first, only do the treble clef or the bass clef,
and only do a certain portion of the clef
within that ledger line range,
two lines below the staff or two lines above the staff.
Practice those on their own, and after a while,
and practice finding them on the keyboard as well,
and after a while you'll have a much better idea
on how this works.
That concludes the lesson for today.
Coming back to me, of course.
Yeah, go over these ledger lines.
I know somebody a while back asked me in the comments
if I can make this video,
and here it is all about the ledger lines.
Do as I said in the video.
You may need to watch the video a couple of times
which I recommend.
If you're looking for more,
you're looking for more practice,
you want to get better at reading notes,
you want to get better at playing songs,
you want to play harder songs,
you want to play scales and all this other stuff,
some of which has been covered in the YouTube series,
but I want to tell you about my website,
LessonsOnTheWeb.com.
If you haven't heard me talk about it already,
I'd be surprised.
There, you can sign up for my music academy.
Of course it's optional.
It does cost a little money, but take a look into that
as there is a lot of content there.
If you've been wondering where all my videos are
that's where they are.
I've been making them all along,
but putting most of them on this site.
I didn't want to make one on ledger lines
because I think that's just kind of general knowledge
that people should know,
but look forward to more YouTube videos.
There are more coming this year.
I have some things in mind that I will announce later on,
but here's today's lesson on ledger lines.
Thanks as always for listening,
and I'll see you for the next lesson.
Thank you.