Ledger Lines – The Lows and the Highs of the Staff

Something that I am pretty terrible at when it comes to reading sheet music efficiently is the concept of: LEDGER LINES.

Urrrghh, sometimes these things drive me crazy. In my previous post I discussed about the basics of the notes on the treble and bass clefs located within the staff. However, when identifying notes on the staff, the notes themselves can go beyond the staff; in other words they appear higher or lower than the staff itself. Basically, what I learned was that ledger lines are extensions or a form of notation that indicates pitches above or below the lines of the regular music staff (such as a higher A note or a lower A note). Here’s a visual example (enlarge if needed):

The notes that go above the staff in the picture are the ledger lines. When I first bumped into this part of musical notation, I was completely confused. It was hard enough for me to memorize the basics and efficiently recognize notes within the staff for both treble and bass clef. These ledger lines totally blew my mind. They still confuse the heck out of me to this day when I’m looking at sheet music for songs that I want to play. Fortunately for me, my friends that also play piano and musical instruments have helped me gain more confidence in reading sheet music in general, by pointing out certain patterns in reading these so called ledger lines. (Shout outs to them!)

One of the patterns that I learned about was that the spaces on the staff turn into the lines for notes beyond the staff (ledger lines). The lines on the staff turned into the spaces of the ledger lines! This would apply for both treble and bass clefs.

Here’s an example for the treble clef regarding the “lines” of the ledger lines (circled notes). See how these circled notes form FACE? Those notes were the spaces within the staff. This same concept goes for the spaces between ledger lines and for both clefs. This would mean that the spaces in between ledger lines would form EGBDF, starting from the E within the staff.

A video that also really helped me and opened my knowledge up to this concept was Karen Ramirez’s instruction on reading ledger lines. I found it to be helpful in introducing this pattern.