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So listen here. Reading notes is not that hard.
You could have heard about these mnemonics, otherwise, you will learn them now.
You got 'notes between the lines'...
The 'notes between the lines' are written -- oddly enough -- between the five lines.
...and you got...
...'notes on the lines'. Those are kind of...
...dropped on the lines themselves.
Between the lines are the notes...
...« F A C E ».
So those will be the 'notes between the lines'.
You literally get the word 'face' there.
That's one mnemonic. Four letters for the four 'notes between the lines'.
The 'notes on the lines' do have another mnemonic. The notes are « E G B D F ».
You could think of multiple mnemonics...
...and you will have to, because egbdf isn't a word itself.
We like to talk about: Elvis' Guitar Broke Down Friday.
When you know these words, you should be able to read every note within the staff.
Now I'd like to combine these two.
Now, I am going to fit in the 'notes on the lines'.
What do we read right here?
It's « E F G A B C D E F » which is the alphabet.
Naming notes is very easy because we only use 7 letters.
« A B C D E F G » and after that we simply start over.
So after G comes A.
When we want to write the G after the high F, we go higher in the staff.
And you can see here that we alternate between 'note on the line', 'note between the lines', 'note on the line'...
And here we should effectively go 'between the lines'.
But we don't have any lines left!
We'll do the following: We think an extra line, as if the staff doesn't have five...
...but six lines.
And between these lines, we draw the next note.
We think an extra line, but we don't write it.
And so we have G.
(on the line, between the lines...) The next note will be on the line again.
That's not H because after G comes A. So the next note is called A.
The A should be on the line, but there are no lines left.
What do we do?
We draw a ledger line.
This ledger line is a temporary line above the staff.
On this line comes A.
Next one: between the lines. After A comes B.
We do need that ledger line again, because we need it to write the note above it.
Then comes C...
...needing one...
...two ledger lines...
...with the note on it.
So you can see 'note on the line', 'note between the lines', 'note on the line'...
..."between" the lines...
...'on the line' and 'between the lines'.
And like so you would continue.
It also works the other way around.
When you go down from E... -- below E comes D --
...'on the line'; the next one will be 'between the lines'.
We think another ledger line and we write the note under this one.
Below D comes C.
C has one ledger line. There it is.
One below is B. This note will be under the ledger line.
Next one: 'on the line'.
Using this system...
...you could easily go 100 ledger lines up or down.
So the system isn't that hard at all.
All this is only legit if you start the staff with...
...a [treble] clef.
This is the treble clef.
The treble clef should always be at the start of the staff...
...otherwise, these notes are valueless.
If you dominate this system...
...the basics of reading notes are yours.