Treble vs Bass clef

[tspallone]

I learned to read music at a very young age (10?) and by that, I mean "Treble" clef. After picking up the bass a few years later and learning to read bass clef, I became confused. Or, just turned around, really. To this day, DECADES later, I look at music (bass clef) and have to think for a second, what it is that I'm looking at. It's VERY frustrating. I know that my youngest sons is a little dyslexic and I wonder if I'm that way too. I know that the position of a note in bass clef is two note positions down on the staff but, I still have to stop and think, "Oh, that's a "C" in Bass clef but an "A" in the same position in Treble clef".

I can get buy when I'm locked in but, damn, I don't know how piano players do it.

[senp5f]

Lots of practice transposing in your head. At a basic level you get some help with piano because the bass clef is your left hand.

But really it comes down to practice and being able to read the "relationships" between notes. I'm no good at it myself, but my father is an ace. He's a classical/symphonic trumpet player. He'll get music that just says "Trumpet in C" or "Trumpet in D." Of course, he plays it all on a Bb horn rather than a C horn, so he just has to transpose everything on the spot, while sight reading it. Happens all the time on wind instruments!

[woolysock]

@tspallone -- I'm in exactly the same boat. Started out on clarinet a million years ago. I no longer read, I decipher and then learn the part. Very frustrating. But I read Real Book chord charts easy as pie.

[Bredian]

Daily practice. Like above, I read bass clef for 5 years daily on 1-2 instruments, took a little time off (decades) and now, if I have sheet music w/o chords (notes only), I make copies and write a lot of notes (letters). Since that gig is only 10-12 practices every spring, its like 2 steps forward, one step back. Not fully retrained.

Find chords easiest to read. Tabs take thought, but are sometimes helpful.. All depends on your training.

[EatADeadGoat]

A good reference point is the line that has the : from the bass clef symbol is F. The very bottom line on the staff is also a G. Hope that helps.

[callmejs]

Hi guys,

Just started taking piano lessons 3 weeks ago. I'm currently learning to read both clefs as I was only playing by ear before taking the class... Mix this with the need to play both hands independently and use the sustain pedal, all I can say is that it's a real humbling experience. ;-)

I stumbled on a site last week, ran the reading exercises 10-15 minutes per day, training my mind to figure out the notes without counting lines and spaces, just from the look of it. It tough, but after a few days I got pretty good at it.

This week my teacher was blown away by how much I have improved in just 7 days. Went from 5-10 seconds per note (ouch) to about 1 second when ledger lines are not involved.

Try it out, if it worked for me it might work for you: Clef Reading - teoria.com

Good luck,
JS

[MalcolmAmos]

To sight read standard notation you gotta read a lot of standard notation -- or rust develops.

[Mayers]

To become good at it you have to read music notation on a regular basis and you can also throw the tenor clef in it for some fun.

[younggun]

I've got the opposite problem...good with Bass Clef, but horrible on Treble. Just picked up a copy of the Real Book in Treble Clef, and am forcing myself to do a tune a day. I figure that will get me up to speed with some daily work.

[sanderic]

I started on French Horn (treble clef) at the age of 13, then bass guitar in the school jazz band at age 15, so I have been reading both treble and bass clef now for over 35 years.
When any musician plays music from the written page, he does not "say" the note to himself when playing. The player associates the note with a position on the instrument and a sound. A French Horn player does not say Bb to himself, he presses the first valve and plays the pitch he hears in his head. This is one of the things that makes reading on bass guitar seem so difficult at first, but later on opens up more possibilities. I'm refering to the fact that C can be played third fret on the A string or eigth fret on the E string. I try to learn ( I am currently the bass player in the New Orleans Shrine Jazz Band), pieces in various positions, ie: open though fifth fret ( which will cause me to have to jump up to D, Eb, etc) or fifth through tenth fret ( causing me to lower down to G and F). Eventualy you learn to move between the positions and the instrument opens up to you.
Now one thing that most jammers or rockers do not understand: When a jammer plays with his friends, he is able to "see" his instrument. When a chart reader plays, he is "blind" to his instrument, if I look over to see what fret I am on, the music will have passed over another measure. That is why I recomend when reading, to stick with one bass, or at least, the same scale length. The jump from G string Bb to Eb, is not the same on a Rickenbacker as it is on Jazz Bass as it is on a Gibson EB1.
Also beware: If you are playing while wearing a strap, Fenders strap buttons fall about the 12th fret, a Peavey T40 strap button falls about the 15th fret, this makes the lower frets "feel" one inch farther away than on another bass.
I could go on and on, I hope I havnt been to negative, I hope you take away the thought that learning to read and shift between positions will open up the world to you in your playing.

[1958Bassman]

When most of you have to read sheet music in Bass Clef, which staff do you see- A on the top line or C on top line?

[Papa Dangerous]

Many piano players after a lot of time in front of sheet music barely read the notes anyways. They look for the shapes of the notes...

Obviously this is not going to look like sheet music because it is sideways, but to a piano player (Think of the vertical lines as dots on sheet music, the horizontal lines is the spacing - This would kinda look like the keys used on the piano itself) these shapes:

|___|___| (evenly spaced) = Triad
|____|__| (two higher notes separated by third with lower note being a 4th) = 1st inversion
|__|____| (two lower notes separated by a third, with higher note a 4th away) = 2md inversion

Its learning things like that can make the piano player be more comfortable with quick sight reading. However bass playing is more linear, but the same idea can still be conceptualized. Learn the spacing of a 5th, (Space, skip space, space or Line, skip line, line) Know that a 4th is similar, but if you start on space/line you end on line/space.

Its just a matter of making all the mental notes, otherwise there is just too much information for your brain to process.

In due time, after practicing this, you just sort of know what note is what on the staff line. If you know the bottom (I originally wrote bottle... I think I subconsciously want to party...) line is G, than you know the third line is D. F is the 4th line because it is the F Clef! The first ledger line above is C... MIDDLE C! The ledger line below is E because if you know an E triad, than you know that it is spelt EGB, thus the line is a third below!

Just practice these ideas and you will get it

[SolidFooting]

In response to the original post, you just have to keep practicing. I teach piano, and can tell you from watching students learn that everybody has some trouble with this, but eventually it just becomes natural, even as when you read this sentence you're not sounding out words, but simply recognizing them. Reading clefs works the same way. Just keep practicing consistently.

There's some good advice in this thread.

[1958Bassman]

Reading music isn't new to me-when I first started on guitar, I could read with no problem. As soon as I started playing guitar, I was learning by ear in addition to my lessons but even at 9-12 years of age, I was able to get through sheet music pretty quickly. In 5th grade, I started playing trombone but unfortunately, nobody told me that I could just transpose the notes by a third (our sheet music had G at the top), so I just memorized which position corresponded to the notes. With three trombones, I got to 1st chair before the end of 5th grade but any reading stopped when I quit taking guitar lessons and playing trombone after 6th grade. Fast forward three years when I decided to learn some songs and I picked up the guitar again. Could barely sight-read while playing. I could always name the notes but could no longer just play it with a guitar in my hands. Never needed to read all that much until I started taking lessons again but since that teacher was a big jazz-head, he really wanted me to be able to read (he would use flute and violin books just to keep up on his sight-reading chops by playing them at correct tempo the first time through). It drove him nuts that I could memorize what I read after one run-through. He ended up taking an ear training class after hearing some of the things I played without knowing all of the theory behind it. He could blow through changes like crazy, knowing that he was hitting notes that were technically "correct", but I always thought he was thinking too much when he played until I heard him after the ear training.

Now that I'm actually practicing on bass, I want to be able to read (I was never that good when it was a flurry of notes, anyway), I want to get a better idea of what I might be seeing (G on top or A on top).

That link for naming the notes is great- I just spent over an hour on it and improved a lot in bass clef.

[JTE]

Work to get away from thinking of standard notation as merely telling you a note. If you're thinking "that space is the E at the second fret", you're still using standard notation as glorified tab, with all the attendant problems. It's telling you a sound so instead of thinking note names, think intervals. When the line goes from one space to the next, it's a third so play a third from whatever the last note you played.

John

[tspallone]

Originally Posted by JTE

Work to get away from thinking of standard notation as merely telling you a note. If you're thinking "that space is the E at the second fret", you're still using standard notation as glorified tab, with all the attendant problems. It's telling you a sound so instead of thinking note names, think intervals. When the line goes from one space to the next, it's a third so play a third from whatever the last note you played.

John

Interesting!! Cool, I'll tweak my head to look at it more in that light.

[Fergie Fulton]

Originally Posted by MalcolmAmos

To sight read standard notation you gotta read a lot of standard notation -- or rust develops.

So true, its a habit based skill in as the more you use it the better it is, and of course visa versa.

But transposing to any clef it is the reference note that is changed, nothing else. So the intervals, notes etc are still the same.
I have found that in teaching the notes ( no acronyms or rhythms involved) is by far the easiest way to relate to the stave.
A-B-C-D-E-F-G just keeps repeating, so every octave up or down any note on a line ends up in a space and vice verca. So it is a case of being able to recite those alphabet note names backwards or forwards from any position, naming them alternate fashion, naming them in 4ths and fifths etc always backwards and forwards starting from any position.

When you can do this then you will relate the notes easier because the pathways have been in-grained. This ingraining is part of the proccess of learning and retaining the information, if you cannot do it just on the alphabet then you will struggle to do it on the staff with the diatonic names.