Hello everyone,
Hope that you are having a great day today! As you read this
post, I am actually working as a piano accompanist for a regional choir
adjudication, where the various choirs from the local high schools and middle
schools come together to be judged and evaluated. I will be playing with over
40 choirs today and tomorrow, which will be a fun change of pace for me!
Today’s post is the final consecutive post, Day 4, of
learning “How to Read Music” in order to write your own. We will cover a few other
related topics in some of the articles to come, before launching into “How to
Write Your Own Music.” I will be continuing this article series on Fridays, for
those of you who are interested in it, but will be featuring other creative
activities on future Mondays and Wednesdays. With that information out of the
way, let’s jump back into learning about how to read music, specifically notes
in the Bass Clef!
Links to Previous
Posts in This Series!
The Bass Clef!
Remember that a staff has five lines and four spaces (see
image).
Notes in the Bass Clef Staff can be written on spaces or lines!
Just like the Treble Clef, notes written in the Bass Clef on
adjacent lines and spaces are also in alphabetical order when they are going up
the staff, and reverse alphabetical order when they are going down the staff,
as shown in the example below:
This example starts on the C (C3) eight notes below Middle C (C4) on the piano.
______________________________________________________
Returning to the shortcut method for reading music:
If we consider the lines of the Bass Clef, starting with the
bottom line - the note G is written on this line. Here are the letter names of
all five lines of the Bass Clef:
BASS CLEF LINES
—A—
—F—
—D—
—B—
—G—
These letter names are not the same as the Treble Clef
lines, so we need a new acronym. Let’s start from the bottom line and go up the
staff, we get the following:
—A— Animals
—F— Fight
—D— Dogs
—B— Big
—G— Great
Easy to remember, right: “Great Big Dogs Fight Animals!”
What about the Bass Clef Spaces? Again, these are different
from the Treble Clef spaces. As always, we start from the bottom and move up:
——
G
——
E
——
C
——
A
——
Since that does not spell any word, we need one final
acronym here:
——
Grass
——
Eat
——
Cows
——
All
——
Using these two acronyms for the Bass Clef lines and spaces,
we can read any note written in the Bass Clef! Here, try to read these notes
using the two acronyms; again the answers will be at the bottom of this post:
Recall that I stated that the
Bass Clef is also called the “F-Clef?” Well that is because the clef reminds
you where the note “F” is in the staff. The symbol is itself an old-style
cursive F (imagine that there are two lines connecting to the two dots), and
in-between those two dots is the line note “F.
_________________________________________________
Now you can read all the notes of the Bass Clef! If you would like even more practice at reading your Bass Clef notes then check out this free website:
To get to the Bass Clef notes, click on the settings button in the bottom right. Click on the Bass Clef Staff, then click on the Treble Clef Staff to deselected it. Hit the settings button one last time and you are ready to practice your notes!This is the classic version of this site, the newer version is too complex at this point to be useful, but the classic version is perfect!
Thank you so much reading this part of my series on “How to
Read Music.” You are well on your way now to being able to write your own music
in the near future. We still have to cover the topics of meter, rhythm, and
what about the black notes on the piano? – so look for the next Day of this
series on Friday. As always, have a fantastic creative and artistic day!!!
PS. If you have any questions regarding the information
provided in this article or would like clarification for any of the above ideas,
please don hesitate to ask questions in the comment section below! I am happy
to answer all of your questions!
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