Reading Music – Clefs and Note Names

Published by admin on May 8, 2021May 8, 2021

The grand staff is used for piano music and consists of the treble clef on top of the bass clef. Notice how the lower notes are written on the lower bass clef and the higher notes are written on the treble clef above.

We read notes on the treble clef and bass clef in piano music. The note’s location on the staff tells us what note it is. Notice as we go up the staff, the pattern of the notes goes from A to G in the order of the alphabet:

The musical alphabet goes from A to G. When we get to G, we start over with A.

When you find a note, the next line or space above it is the next letter in the alphabet. If you go down to the next line or space, you go backwards in the alphabet to the letter that comes before it:

Let’s look at ways to remember the notes on the treble clef and bass clef.

Treble Clef

Higher notes are written on the treble clef. The first line starts on E and goes up to F on the top line. This pattern spells out EGBDF:

To remember this, think of a phrase you can create to help you remember this pattern. A popular one is Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.

Next let’s look at the notes in the spaces of the treble clef. An easy way to remember this one is that the notes spell out the word “FACE”:

Bass Clef

Lower notes are written on the bass clef. The bottom line of the bass clef is G and the top line is A:

To remember this pattern, we can use part of the phrase used before: Good Boys Deserve Fudge Always.

For the notes in the spaces, we can use the phrase All Cows Eat Grass:

Ledger Lines

Sometimes we need to play notes that lie outside of the lines and spaces of the clefs, so we add ledger lines. We continue the musical alphabet to find these notes. Notice the pattern of F A C E G B D: