Apart from writing the names next to the notes, is there any other easier way of reading notes off the stave? I find myself playing a piece and then suddenly pausing to try and figure out what a note is!!

Notes off the stave happen quite a lot up the top end of both clarinet and flute, and the only way I've found to successfully negotiate them is practice. The more you read them, the more you get used to them - look for the shape of the notes (how they go up and down) - that can help.

It's true! Don't just look at individual notes, try to assess the shape both horizontally and vertically. For example, it's easy to spot a passage of octaves - you can then read the easier note to start with.

Where will you do your BMus?

Thank you!

I have been offered a place at Chichester University (it might be a BA actually, but I'm sure it said BMus - not sure what the difference is though)

The only advice I can offer is practice! The more you do, the easier it becomes, and you do get used to patterns in just the same way that I would imagine you have with notes on the stave.

Yep, the more you play them the more fluent you will become.

I'm mostly fine with notes above the stave because so much violin music is written up there, but struggle below the clef when I'm reading piano music.

I reckon it's just loads of practice!

One of my advanced piano pupils was sight reading a piece with loads of really high notes, all off the stave, the other day. She read them so fast I was really taken aback - she was playing as fluently as a line of middle Cs! I said, "how do you read those so fast? You're better than me!" She said that because she plays the flute she reads them all the time so she knows just by the look of them.

I find a useful reference point for ledger lines is to remember that the one on the second floating line above the treble clef mirrors the one on the second floating line below the bass clef - both are C.

Beyond that I'm fine going up to the next C as I play the flute - but I need a quick think on sub-bass ones.

Sounds good! Thank you.

Your signature looks like a line from 'Sweet and Low' - doing this for my 6 exam in the summer!!

....Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon and blow!

Reading by interval works for ledger lines - until your eyes start to go funny. The first few lines above the treble clef are the same as the bass clef spaces - ACEG - and then if you can blot out the A and C, which are easy enough to read, you've got EGBDF and FACE. Where I'm concerned, my eyes start doing funny things no matter what way I try to read really high or low notes, though, when it's new music.

I have found this as I have got older. I used to be able to read ledger lines without any problems - these days I need good quality music otherwise the lines blur into a continous line.

yes, i still have troubles reading ledger lines, but am much better than before. you'll get used to it after a while!

Am I the only person who prefers to spell it 'leger'?? I know you CAN spell it either way, but a 'ledger' to me is a large, dusty book...

I always thought it was 'leger' - and so does my dictionary. But then I always thought that 'they're' = 'they are' and 'their' shows something belonging to several people and 'it's' = 'it is' and 'practise' is a verb, so what do I know?!

Well done! It's a BA (Hons) at Chichester. What's your instrument?

A BA is a Bachelor of the Arts, where as a BMus is a Bachelor of Music. I think very generally speaking a BMus is seen as more practical, where as a BA is more academic. But it varies between each uni anyway.

At Chichester each semester you take a module in performance, composition, stlye & genre and then a choice of single modules in Instrumental or Vocal Teaching, Musical Grammar, Writing about Music, Expressing Music through Movement and Gesture, and Music and Society.

Good luck. Lucid

Grrr - can we not start this again?! This was discussed in the Students' forum where people came up with all kinds of spurious notions about the difference. My BMus was a highly academically rigourous course taught by various leading academics with international reputations. It was about 5% performance, although it could have been a lot more.

But yes, it does vary between universities.

That's why I said very generally speaking.

Wasn't trying to label either one as being absolutely right. Lucid

Someone after my own heart!!! (I always thought it was 'leger' but my dictionary gives either spelling )

I've never spelt it 'ledger', always 'leger'...

The OED only like ledger...

3. Mus. ledger line, one of the short lines added temporarily above and below the stave to accommodate notes in a passage which cannot be contained by the usual five lines. They are numbered from the stave upward and downward, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. ledger lines above or below. Also ledger space, a space between two ledger lines or between the stave and the 1st ledger line.
[The origin of this use is not clear; perh. the word may be the n. used attrib. with allusion to sense A2. The common statement that it represents the F. léger light, slight, is baseless.]


(Sense A2, by the way, is about horizontal scaffolding boards!)

Scholes' Oxford Companion to Music clearly states that the word can be spelt either way.

So everyone is right.

And in French (showing a total lack of imagination) they are called "lignes supplémentaires" (extra lines). Hence a slightly surreal conversation one day:
Me: "Comment on appelle les lignes supplémentaires qu'on met en haut ou en bas"? (What do you call the extra lines you can have at the top or the bottom?)
My oboe teacher: "Lignes supplémentaires" (extra lines)
Me: "Oui, d'accord mais c'est quoi leur vrai nom?" (OK but what's the real term?)
My oboe teacher: "Lignes supplémentaires" (extra lines).

! In German they are 'Hilfslinie' , so help lines, and in Spanish its the same as French

And if anyone is interested, in my English - other language dictionaries, they both ignore the 'leger' spelling, not even a mention of it!

funny you should say that ...

I'm in this club too. And whatever Maizie's OED says I'm happy to believe that it's related to French léger meaning light. I'm not going to change the way I spell it anyway. Perhaps I've inherited my mother's tendency to claim that the dictionary was wrong if it didn't agree with her spelling!


Returning to the original topic...

You could try getting a really comprehensive scale and arpeggio manual for your instrument, covering its whole range, and work your way through it systematically, concentrating mainly on the sections outside the stave. So much of Western Classical Music is based on segments of all sorts of scales and arpeggios that being totally familiar with how they look can really feed productively into sight-reading.

I was most disappointed when I started learning the oboe in France to discover that all the names that people had insisted came from French didn't. As I posted above "leger lines" is "lignes supplémentaires" (extra lines), semi-breve is "une ronde" (a round note), minim is "une blanche" (a white note), crotchet is " une noire" (a black note) and confusingly a quaver is "une croche" (a hook).




My French oboe teacher insisted I stop playing scales from memory and buy a scale book which has scales for the whole range of the instrument (not from tonic to tonic) and play them while reading the music.

So the fact that 'une croche' sounds similar to 'crotchet' is entirely coincidental and they don't share the same etymology at all? To continue off-topic (sorry!), what is the French for 'semi-quaver'?

Ooooooooooooh, it's my OED now. I like that though Oxford University Press may feel differently...

(I like the OED for looking things up in, but I thoroughly accept that what it says and normal useage can be quite different!)

Double croche, I gather

(There's a link on the thread Why is a minim called a minim which gives foreign language equivalents of all the note names)

According to the dictionary "crotchet" does come from "croche" it is just the two languages have attribued different meanings to the same word when applied to musical notation. Actually, I think the French is more logical here as a single quaver does have a hook (which is the literal meaning of "croche") whereas a crotchet doesn't.

Semi-quaver is "double croche" and demi-semi quaver is "triple croche."

Rests are either "silence" or "pause." I thought these were interchangeable but one of them (I think it's silence) is a crotchet rest and the other is a minim rest.

Actually, I think the French is more logical here as a single quaver does have a hook (which is the literal meaning of "croche") whereas a crotchet doesn't.

Yes - I've thought so for some time!

Regarding the term 'double quavers' I find this is a useful way to describe semiquavers at the learning stage.