Learn about ledger lines

Get to grips with these essential parts of music notation with our simple step-by-step guide

When 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

01 Middle C

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.

F E D C B A G F G A B C D E F G

02 On the treble clef

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.

03 On the bass clef

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.

04 On the piano

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.

On the keyboard

See how notes on ledger lines translate to notes on your piano

Top tip Which hand to use? If you see Middle C on a ledger line below the treble stave, play it on the piano with your right hand. If it has a ledger line above the bass stave, play with your left hand.

Down low This note with two ledger lines is in fact C. Going from left to right along the keyboard, it’s the second C you’ll see – two octaves below Middle C Middle C – bass clef The most important note on the keyboard can be notated on both staves. On the bass stave Middle C is positioned one ledger line above the stave

Octave clefs

Signs you’ll see to keep things simple

Too many ledger lines can get confusing, so if the music calls for notes that are very high or very low in pitch, the composer can use different clefs to help. If you see the number 8 above a treble clef or below a bass clef, this means that the notes must be played an octave higher or lower respectively. If the notes need to be really high or low, a ‘15’ can be used above or below the clefs. Our two examples actually tell the pianist to play the same notes, despite the different places on the staves. On the ‘15’ example, the C notes are in Middle C’s position on the stave, but is actually the C two octaves higher and lower. Middle C – treble clef One ledger line below the treble stave is where Middle C can be found too. When it appears here it is usually played by the right hand Up high You will often see ledger lines above the treble clef stave. This note is A (the second A above Middle C) and it rests on the first ledger line above the stave