Landmark notes outside the staff
The Last Landmark Note brings extends your note reading range to 4 full octaves and extends it beyond the music staff by 2 ledger lines. Just like I promised.
Of course, to read music notes outside the staff, we use the same method. Find your closest Landmark Note and move along the Musical Alphabet to figure out
What are they? Ledger Lines are just an extension of the staff. They're just little itsy-bitsy lines that we add on to the staff when we need them. We use them instead of using full-length lines and we only use them when the notes go high or low enough that they're beyond the bounds of the staff.
Why do we use them? Because the expanded staff below is so incredibly confusing, so everybody agreed not to use it.
Ledger Lines
We've been learning the Grand Staff because, well, why not? It's easy, and you learn so many notes so fast.
But the truth is that most instrumentalists don't use the Grand Staff. They use the Bass or Treble clef.
And while we've covered some ledger lines above and below the grand staff, we still need to understand the hidden ledger lines inside the grand staff.
When reading a solitary bass or treble clef, you'll eventually run into ledger lines below the staff (Treble Clef) and above the staff (Bass Clef) that you have yet to learn.
Except you already learned them. They're just the notes on the "missing" part of the grand staff. The animation below removes 1 staff from the grand staff so you can see this relationship.
As you probably figured out by now, you can keep adding Landmark Notes forever and ever, extending ledger lines to infinity and beyond.
However, I don't recommend doing that. At least, not yet. There is a better way.
C Clef: Reading Music on the Alto and Tenor Clef
If you've landed here because you're in music school and you have to learn how to read notes on the Tenor or Alto Clef, I have good news.
C clef is the easiest clef to read notes on.
But, before we learn how to read music on the alto and tenor clef, let's take a look at how the C clef fits into the grand staff.
Obviously, the C clef is never placed here in written music. But , with this animation, you can see it's range and how it fits into the Grand Staff.
Why do I say it's the easiest to read? Simple.
The C clef itself has simple-to-remember markers for each Landmark Note. Knowing this makes it easy to read both alto and tenor clef.
The middle, pointy-in bit of the clef shows where C is. The top edge of the clef symbol touches the G note. The bottom edge of the clef symbol touches the F note.
Now, while clefs can technically move, the C clef is the only one that does in modern practice. It can form both the alto and tenor clef. Here, you can see the shift happen.
Using the C clef to Read Ledger Lines
As I said earlier, you can extend the Landmark notes forever to continue to read ledger lines. However, it's far easier to use an imaginary C clef to read the extended ledger lines.
By mentally moving a C clef over the High or Low C (on the ledger lines above and below the staff), you can easily visualize where the next highest (or lowest) ledger line is and, naturally, read notes all the notes over this extended, 6 octave range.
Even Further: Octava Markings
Sometimes the music goes so far outside of the staff that even ledger lines become awkward to use. In this situation, composers and/or music editors use an octava marking instead of using tons of ledger lines.
An octava marking simply moves the music down or up by 1 or 2 octaves. Here are the octave symbols for moving notes down and up.
Header | One Octave | Two Octaves |
|---|---|---|
Up | 𝄶 | 𝄸 |
Down | 𝄷 | 𝄹 |
Conclusion
This article has been a thorough dive into learning how to read music notes on any staff, in any octave. It's incredibly thorough, but there is plenty more to learning to read music than just identifying note names and pitches. To truly master the pitches, you also need to learn how to read accidentals in music. And to actually play music, you also need to know how to read rhythms. Knowing what barlines are and how they work will also help aid your quest by helping you "chunk" information together.
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