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NAD · Post by **NAD** » Fri Jun 22, 2007 2:43 am

I can read treble clef just fine, been doing it for years. But now I'm trying to read notes for piano and the only thing I ca think is: "There's no such goddamn thing as a B#!" Basically I feel like I'm transposing everything from the way it should looks in treble, which is sadly a slow process for me. Is there perhaps any less painful a strategy I could use to acclimate to bass clef?

hvaring · Post by **hvaring** » Fri Jun 22, 2007 2:50 am

NAD wrote:Is there perhaps any less painful a strategy I could use to acclimate to bass clef?

Practice?

Meffy · Post by **Meffy** » Fri Jun 22, 2007 2:50 am

I'll be interested in seeing what answers you get. Being a less-than-expert reader of musical notation, I try keeping in mind that the bass clef glyph is a stylized fraktur letter "F" (as the treble clef is a stylized ornate "G") as a mnemonic to recall that the line between the dots is F. But further past that I can't seem to get.

And I know what you mean about transposing, and the hazards involved. It's like trying to learn radiotelegraph ("Morse") code by memorizing visual dots and dashes instead of sequences of audio tones -- there's a step that gets in the way of really getting it right.

DrBoomBoom · Post by **DrBoomBoom** » Fri Jun 22, 2007 3:41 am

NAD,

There is such a thing as a B#, it's in the key of C#.

The lines, bottom to top, are Good Boys Do Fine Always. The spaces from bottom to top are All Cows Eat Grass. Lines, GBDFA, Spaces ACEG. Meffy's right, the clef is a stylized F with the dots around the F, just like the treble clef is a stylized G with the spiral around the G. there's also a moveable C clef that we hardly ever use anymore, just some old trombone music or maybe old choir stuff, and it's a stylized C with and indent that shows where C is.

hvaring has the real answer. Practice.

wrench45us · Post by **wrench45us** » Fri Jun 22, 2007 3:00 pm

I've found that it's helpful to think of the bass clef as being an offset version of the treble, i.e C is two additional lines down, instead of just one, e is one line down, instead of the first line of the staff, g starts the bass staff instead of being two lines up.

botkiller · Post by **botkiller** » Fri Jun 22, 2007 3:17 pm

I'd also add that it's important to practice to get to the point where you are not so much reading the music in terms of notes but reading in terms of patterns. I had a music teacher once who told me that I spend too much time thinking about what the next note was, when my brain intuitively knew that it was two steps up from where I was on the keyboard. That's easier said than done of course, but I have found it to be a very helpful trick to discipline my self further. If you're spending a lot of time thinking "Ok, ACEG - where do I go from here to get to E, I just played A," you start to analyze too much. If you know what Key you're in, you know what you technically can and cannot play, and so you start to read patterns from there (hopefully) and it becomes a little easier.

Meffy · Post by **Meffy** » Fri Jun 22, 2007 3:26 pm

botkiller wrote:I'd also add that it's important to practice to get to the point where you are not so much reading the music in terms of notes but reading in terms of patterns. I had a music teacher once who told me that I spend too much time thinking about what the next note was [...]

Yup, that's another aspect of what I meant by the "learning Morse code" comment.

JumpingJackFlash · Post by **JumpingJackFlash** » Fri Jun 22, 2007 4:07 pm

NAD wrote:I can read treble clef just fine, been doing it for years. But now I'm trying to read notes for piano and the only thing I ca think is: "There's no such goddamn thing as a B#!" Basically I feel like I'm transposing everything from the way it should looks in treble, which is sadly a slow process for me. Is there perhaps any less painful a strategy I could use to acclimate to bass clef?

My post on Bass clef here (part of my Introduction to music notation) might be of use.

NAD · Post by **NAD** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 4:22 pm

Thanks to all for your advice!

Cordelia · Post by **Cordelia** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 5:02 pm

Flash cards worked for me. Kind of what botkiller said. You need to eliminate the middle step- what is the name of that note?- and learn to put your finger down instinctively.
I made myself a set of flash cards with notation on the front and a piano graphic on the back (although I did include the note name in the answer on the back of the card, for reference.)
After I mastered the single notes, I made a set for chords, then for common rhythms (and, for learning, just played the rhythms on one note).
It took me about two months to become quite good at reading music. I had tried and tried before that with only a little luck.
Now my problem isn't the reading, but in getting my hands to keep up.
This may sound corny, but it works.

Figuring Out Bass Clef