Lesson 2: Ledger lines and the octave
About this video
Ledger lines are short extra lines that let us write notes above or below the staff, such as the C below the treble staff and the A above it. The video shows that notes with the same letter name sound alike but at different heights, and the distance from one A to the next is an octave. It ends with the memory aids FACE and Every Good Boy Does Fine.
You'll be able to
- name notes written on ledger lines above and below the treble staff.
- explain what an octave is and where the word comes from.
- use FACE and Every Good Boy Does Fine to name treble clef notes.
Key words
- ledger line
- A short extra line added above or below the staff for notes that are too high or low to fit on it.
- octave
- The distance from one note to the next note with the same letter name, eight notes away.
- register
- How high, middle or low a group of notes sounds.
Transcript
- [Tutor] If we would like a note below the D, which is on the bottom of the staff, we need to add what is called a ledger line, if we add this ledger line, we then can put a note on that line and it will be a C, one note below the D. This ledger line can be used in either direction, so the note above the treble clef staff is a G, if we add a ledger line and put a note on that ledger line, it will be an A.
These ledger lines can be used above or below the staff and there is no limit to how many ledger lines we can add, but after four or five ledger lines, the notes become very difficult to read. Let's go back to the single ledger line below the treble clef staff, this note is a C, if we add a note below this ledger line, we create a B and if we add a second ledger line and place a note on that second ledger line, it will be an A, we always remember that it is the seven letters of the alphabet that we use in naming notes, so if we're at a C and go down, descending in pitch, then it goes to a B and if we add a second ledger line and place a note on that line, it will be an A.
Now let's look at all the different notes, that we've discussed from the A below the treble clef staff to the A above the staff, now we see there are three As, one below the staff, one in the middle of the staff and one above the staff, these three notes all sound like the same pitch, but one is low, one is in the middle register and one is high, if we count from the low A to the middle A, we see that the middle A is the eighth note above the low A, the distance from one A to the next is called an octave, which comes from the Latin, octava, meaning eight-part, we can now read two octaves of music on the treble clef, the low A to the middle A is one octave, the middle A to the A above the staff is the second octave.
There are two memorization tools that some use to remember the treble clef notes, the spaces are F, A, C, E, which of course spells FACE and the lines are E, G, B, D, F, Every Good Boy Does Fine.
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