TM

Chapter 2

THE TREBLE CLEF

This sweet little shape is probably already familiar to you, but you may not have known that it’s called
the treble clef.

In musical notation, the treble clef usually indicates that we are going to be playing with our right
hand. There’s a bit more to it than that, but for now, you can assume that whenever you see the treble
clef you should play with your right hand. The treble clef lives on something called the “staff”, which
is just a fancy name for five lines and four spaces. Each line and space of the staff corresponds to a
specific note on the piano, and learning the staff is another important step on your musical journey
towards learning to sight read. You don’t have to worry about which line and space refer to which
note on the keys just yet. Let’s get acquainted with the lines and spaces first…

The lines and spaces of the staff are numbered from bottom to top like this:

Notation is written on a staff that includes a clef like the treble clef, a time signature, and bar lines that
divide music into what we call measures. This is what a staff looks like:

To help you sharpen your skills, complete the worksheet on the following page. This may seem like a
very simple and basic exercise, but just like learning the layout of your keyboard, it is equally crucial to
learn the layout of the staff (those lines and spaces that the treble clef lives on). You need to be able to
identify the lines and spaces on the staff quickly and easily to be a successful sight reader.

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 WORKSHEET

Write an “L” below each line note and an “S” below each space note. Also identify
the line or space number. The first example is completed for you.

L2

Write the note on the staff that corresponds to the line or space note indicated
below.

L3 L5 S1 S4 S2 L1 S3 L2 L4 S5

S4 L1 L5 S1 S3 L2 L4 S3 L3 S2

14 Level 2: THE STAFF & SIGHT READING

Learning to read notes is really just learning how to quickly identify which line or space equals which
note on the piano. Now that you are comfortable with the layout of the staff, it is time to introduce the
treble clef, which will show us which notes on the keyboard these lines and spaces refer to.

Middle C, which is the C located nearest the middle of your piano, is shown in the treble clef like this:

You’ll notice that Middle C is written on a line below the staff. This is a called a “ledger line”. Because
there are many more notes on the keyboard than there are lines and spaces on the staff, we use led-
ger lines to show the notes that are above and below the lines and spaces of the staff.

You’ll remember middle C as one of your landmarks from Level 1, and it’s equally important in sight
reading because so much of the music you will sight read as a beginner is based on the starting posi-
tion of the note C. Become best friends with middle C! In Level 1 you memorized the location of middle
C, and now you need to memorize how this note looks on the staff, as well as connecting that visual
to its location on the piano. You will be so thankful you did. The thing is, being great at sight reading is
partly logical certainty and partly educated guessing. If you can memorize a few landmark notes, you
will be able to make educated guesses about other notes, which will help you to read notes faster.

Moving up from C, we go to the next possible spot on the staff, which is D.

From there we move up consecutively, using all the lines and spaces.

Chapter 2: THE TREBLE CLEF 15

 UNDERSTANDING THE TREBLE CLEF
So now you might be wondering, How on earth am I going to remember all of this?!!! The good news is that
there are a few ways. We’ll take a look at each of them here, and then you can decide the method(s)
that will work best for you. More than likely, you will use a combination of all of these approaches.

ACRONYMS
If you ever took a band class in high school, chances are you’ve heard these before. Acronyms are the
tried and true, old as time, method to identify the lines and spaces. For example:

Just a note of caution here: while this method of learning the notes can be very useful at the beginning,
I find that it can prevent you from being able to sight read quickly because you’re always taking time
to recite a silly rhyme before you can identify the notes. That’s why having a variety of tools for sight
reading will help you become confident and efficient in identifying note names, so have a look at these
other methods, too.

16 Level 2: THE STAFF & SIGHT READING

MEMORIZATION
For some of us, with time and effort and lots of flashcards, the names and locations of the notes can
be memorized. If you are one of these people, congratulations! Here is a page that includes the most
common notes in the treble clef you will encounter as a beginner and their note names. If this is your
style, you can use this as a reference and a memorization tool.

Chapter 2: THE TREBLE CLEF 17

 LANDMARK NOTES & EDUCATED GUESSING
Even if you can’t memorize all the notes, just memorizing a few landmark notes will give you a reliable
way to help orient you to “guess” your way through all the notes that aren’t landmark notes. Using
landmarks will help you to use logic and guesswork to sight read quickly. Here are our recommended
landmark notes.

There’s good ol’ middle C, of course. It works because by this point you can easily identify middle C as
the note that lives on the line, below the main lines and spaces of the staff. You know your alphabet,
too, so you can quickly figure out that when you see a note that skips the next spot and shows up on
the first line, you can simply skip up from C in the alphabet, which puts you on E.

G is another handy landmark note. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, the circle part of the tre-
ble clef wraps around line two, which is G. (The treble clef is actually also known as the G clef for this
reason.) Finding that circle of the treble clef allows you to quickly locate line two and identify it as G.
This gives you another point of reference to use when identifying notes on the staff. When you see
something like this,

you can see that you’ll need to move up three spots from G to get to the next note. So, just count up
three from G in the musical alphabet and land on B!

High C is located in space three. This note is played one octave above middle C.

18 Level 2: THE STAFF & SIGHT READING

What this skill comes down to is the ability to memorize and be able to instantly identify a couple of
key locations on the staff and then quickly estimate the distance from that landmark to the next note
you are trying to identify. Give it a try and see if it works for you!

Use your landmark notes to help you count up or down to identify the following note names.

PATTERNS & INTERVALS

Some pianists find it more helpful to approach educated guessing in terms of groups of notes rather
than individuals. If you see a group of notes that are all just a step apart, you can read the first note
and guess the rest based on their distance from the first note in the pattern. The more you do this,
the easier it becomes to guess your way through notes that follow less obvious patterns. Suddenly,
you’ll be able to read just a few notes and simply play the rest without thinking about the note names
at all—because you will be playing based on spatial differences rather than thinking about the names
of the notes.

Music often follows patterns and luckily for you, beginner notation generally includes some predict-
able patterns. For example:

Here we are moving up one note at a time from one note to the next possible note. This is called mov-
ing in steps. When you see this pattern, where notes are moving from line to space to line to space,
etc, the thing to know is that you can read the first note and guess the rest while following along with
your eyes so you know when to stop.

In this example, we are moving from our landmark note G down in steps, ending on C. When you see
this, try reading only the G and allow your fingers to move down in steps until you’ve played each note.

Chapter 2: THE TREBLE CLEF 19

 In this example, the notes are moving from line to line to line.

We are skipping over the notes in the spaces. When you see this, you can read the first note, which is
C, and guess the rest by moving up in skips to play C-E-G.

The same thing works in reverse if we show the notes moving down in jumps or skips.

Use your knowledge of landmark notes, acronyms, and patterns to identify the note names. Write
them on the lines below.

20 Level 2: THE STAFF & SIGHT READING

PLAYING IN THE TREBLE CLEF
If you’ve gotten this far, completed all the worksheets, and read every word, you are ready to play your
first piece of sheet music! Also, you should throw yourself a party because you’ve done a lot of great
work here. CONGRATS!

Below is your first piece of sheet music.

Okay, I’ll admit—there’s just one more thing before you play it. And this is the crazy part, because
besides just decoding the notes and their locations, you ALSO have to play these notes with the appro-
priate rhythm. Deep breaths—you can do this!
2.3 - Intro To Reading The Treble Clef
If you feel uncertain about rhythm, just take a moment to review the rhythm concepts you learned in
Level 1. You can also hear the following song inside of Pianote, so if you need a little extra help getting
started, head on over to Lesson 2 of Level 2 in the Pianote Foundations.

& 44 œ œ œ œ
1

w ú ú w

& œ œ œ w ú ú
œ w

9 4

&œ œ œ œ w ú ú w

13

&œ œ œ œ w
ú ú w

Before you begin to play, follow this checklist:

• Clap or count (out loud) the rhythm of the song.

• Identify the starting note.

• Look for patterns before you play. Notice when notes are moving up or down, in steps or skips.

• Play the notes very slowly and be conscious of the rhythms as you play. You won’t play them
perfectly right away. Don’t worry, that’s what practice is for!

Chapter 2: THE TREBLE CLEF 21