Read Piano Ledger Line Notes (Fast & Easy)

reading notes can be very challenging and overwhelming especially at the beginning so we have a great lesson on how to read notation on the grand staff that uses the super cool prop i call it my pin sheet it's just a piece of tin that has a staff stickered on there so it's a super useful tool so we're going to talk today about how to read ledger line notes because once you've kind of figured out how to read notes on the staff and you're feeling real good about it and you encounter music that has notes that are way up here or way down here it can be super confusing and it can take you a while to figure out the notes and that's it's no good we want you reading notes fast so let's talk about some ways that we can quickly read notes up high so number one or download so number one you wanna really be confident you wanna have this this top space of the treble clef when you're reading ledger lines above the treble clef locked down so you wanna memorize that this guy here is e you can use the old school you know face f-a-c-e so if you know this is e all you need to master the ledger lines are your super great alphabet skills so this is e this is f top line treble clef f now if you see a note let's say let's let's play this guy right here he's he's way up there you know this is f you know that if you go up to the next line you're going to skip in the alphabet so you're going to skip over g and go to a and then you know if you're going to go up to the next line beyond this you're going to skip again so this is a skip b c so that's how you get through figuring out the ledger line notes you can do some really quick work using your alphabet looking at since this ledger line note is a line note find the top line of the staff this is f and then skip count your alphabet f a c now this is actually really really cool because when you're at this part of the staff you can spell the word face f a c e and then you can reset that concept beginning on this top line f a c and if you had another line here that could be e so that's kind of cool it'll help you to read those much faster um and then if it comes to say the space notes maybe you have a note here what i like to do is use that trick reset that spelling of the word face f a and then you just go up one step in the alphabet that's b so that's how you can read ledger line notes in the treble clef really really quickly next up we have the ledger lines that exist between the grand staff so this can get a little bit complicated so we're going to work our way in step stick with me it doesn't have to be complicated so in this in my little tin sheet prop here we have a middle c line shown all the way through the staff which you wouldn't normally see in sheet music but it's there to help quantify that middle c is important and it exists between treble and bass clef and it kind of serves as like this neutral ground this can be played with the left hand or it could be played with the right hand so shown in the treble or the bass and it's the same place on the piano it's the c in the middle so when you're looking at sheet music and you see that first ledger line below the treble clef you know that that is middle c and it is played with your right hand when you see notation that shows that middle c line just above the bass clef and you'll know that it belongs to the bass clef because that middle c line kind of shows a little bit lower that middle c is then played in the bass clef often mostly with the left hand now this is where things can get a little bit complicated because while middle c is the connector between the grand staff the treble this is the treble the travel trampoline base um it can also you can have ledger lines above this middle c point that belong to the base clef so let's just take a look at that for a second here you see middle c shown that's the first ledger line above this bass clef so you've got that memorized because you should middle c is a very important one you should just know it by looking at it you've got your middle c now what happens if you get another ledger line above that we're going to use the same trick we use for the treble clef we're going to skip count up in our alphabet from c so you know this is middle c you jump up from that and you end up on e so now you're playing the e above middle c in the bass clef meaning you're going to be playing a little bit in treble clef territory with your left hand and so you can negotiate through those ledger lines skip counting through your alphabet when you're moving from line to line or just moving up in steps through your alphabet when you're moving from line to space or space to line so that should help you move through that much more smoothly the other way you will see this shown is when you've got your treble clef and you've got these ledger lines that are existing below middle c and the treble clef so once again go back to that foundation of i know middle c if you've got a note hanging out just one below that middle c line count down in your alphabet by one you've got b if you've got a note that exists two ledger lines below you know you've got middle c that's one you've got another ledger line below that that's two skip count down in your alphabet from c and you'll end up on a and that's how you can negotiate ledger lines in the middle of the staff okay so this brings us to the bass clef which has always felt a little bit more complicated for me because instead of counting up your alphabet you're counting down so it's flipped over so it really helps if you know that this is all cows eat grass because you'll know right away this is a now if you want to do just simple counting you can just go one down from a which is g and then you know that you can kind of just skip count down your alphabet from there so if this is g you think i visualize the keyboard in my mind i see a g and then i go oh i jump down from g is e and then i can think again okay i jump down from e is yay we're on c so this is a super low c on the piano so that's one way to do it but you can also use the rhyme kind of like we did in the treble clef but again we have to reverse it so if this is all cows eat grass let's think of this backwards so this is g this is e this is c this is a and then we're going to just go to this line which is g and we're going to repeat that pattern on the lines again so this is g e c and if we had another line it would be a and then you can just move up and down from those ledger lines from there depending on what notes you're seeing so if you saw this i would really quickly think g e okay one down from e is d boom i've got it so that's how you can look at ledger lines to make them feel a little bit less overwhelming now a lot of people when they're sight reading think i should just be able to see the notes on the page and play them and for some people that is the case i have to be completely honest with you for me it is not the story if i see ledger line notes i have to take a pause and think about it for a second and that's okay when you're learning music you're supposed to be able to take your time and go through the process however you go through it it's a very individual process so use these skills to help you become better the more you do this the more you practice this the faster you will get at it i promise um i hope you found these tips and tricks helpful thanks for watching comment below say hello i always love to hear from you and we'll see you around [Music] you

Channel: Pianote

Views: 161,676

Keywords: how to read music, ledger lines, reading music, music theory, music theory for beginners, piano lessons for beginners, how to read faster, bass clef ledger lines, read music piano, read music faster, read music notes, reading music piano, reading music classical, reading music notes, read music for beginners, read music in 15 minutes, bass clef practice, music theory chords, music theory for dummies, music notation explained, grand staff piano, grand staff notes

Id: tjsdPFXukmE

Length: 7min 54sec (474 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020