Understanding theory
Learn about ledger lines Get to grips with these essential parts of music notation with our simple step-by-step guide
W
hen you’re looking at a piece of music to play on the piano, you’ll notice that the treble clef and the bass clef are joined together with a bracket on the left-hand side. This is called the grand stave and makes it possible for you to read the music to play on the keyboard with both your left and right hands simultaneously. However, as there are more notes on the piano that can fit on
the treble, bass or even grand stave, we need ledger lines to help. These are lines that work to extend either the treble stave or bass stave’s five lines in order to represent notes that appear either above or below the stave. For example, Middle C appears below the five main lines of the treble clef, yet it appears above the five main lines of the bass clef. So, to help you recognise the note, a ledger line is placed through
the notehead, spaced equally relative to the lines in the main stave. Middle C is then placed on the ‘imaginary’ line above or below the stave. Many other notes will appear in your sheet music with ledger lines. Much higher notes will appear above the treble stave, notes in the middle of the range will appear on ledger lines in the middle of the grand stave and very low notes you’ll see drop down below the bass stave.
Line it up How to recognise, play and use ledger lines
G
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
01 Middle C
02 On the treble clef
The best place to start is to find Middle C. This is the first note to be placed on a ledger line below the treble stave or above the bass stave. On our example, you can see that Middle C can appear in two locations, but it’s the same note.
Ledger lines on the treble clef begin to crop up after G, which rests above the top line of the stave. Work out which note to play by checking its position on the ledger line and lines below it.
F
E
D
C
B
A
G
F
03 On the bass clef
04 On the piano
If you take a look at the bass clef, you’ll see that ledger lines will be present below the stave after the note F, which rests beneath the last line of the bass clef’s five. These notes can go rather low.
Think about the notes on the bass clef (plus ledger lines) as keys on the left of the piano keyboard, the ledger lines in the middle as notes in the centre, and notes on the treble clef as notes on the right of the keyboard.
42 Piano for Beginners
