- 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.