Lesson 1a - Pitches and Clefs

A Starting Place

By the time musicians begin formally exploring music theory, they likely are familiar with basic music notation–treble and bass clefs, staves, ledger lines, and accidentals–due to time spent performing. If you are uncomfortable with any of aspect of these concepts, you can review by reading the explanations under the Further Reading section of Discussion 1a.

Clefs

Even though most college music students are familiar with reading music, they are usually far more comfortable when working in the clef most associated with their primary instrument or voice-part. It is vital that musicians be fluent in not only the two most common clefs – treble and bass – but also with two additional clefs: alto clef and tenor clef. These clefs are commonly used by instruments such as viola, cello, trombone, and bassoon. They alleviate the use of ledger lines in the extreme registers of an instrument, so it is imperative that you become comfortable reading music in all of the most common clefs.

Treble clef is sometimes referred to as a G-clef, and bass clef can be called an F-clef. Alto and tenor clefs are known as C-clefs.

Goals for this topic

In the examples below, the treble and alto clefs are in unison, and the tenor and bass clefs are in unison. The treble and bass clefs are separated by one octave. You can find middle C on the first line below the treble clef staff.

Knowing this, use these examples to find:

• the order of pitch names for each clef’s lines and spaces.
• why treble clef is a G-clef, why bass clef is an F-clef, and why alto and tenor clefs are C-clefs.
• where middle C is on each clef.
• any tips or tricks that may help in differentiating and reading clefs.

Conclusion

The lines and spaces of each clef are:

Clefs have secondary names because each clef is centered around the pitch in its name. The bass clef’s dots surround an F, and the two C-clefs are centered on middle C. Treble clef, however, not only encircles the G at the center of its spiral, but it evolved from a stylized G.

For a well-researched, short article on the evolution of clefs, I suggest reading Jimmy Stamp’s The Evolution of the Treble Clef from the Smithsonian website.

Tips and tricks

When asked about their methods, past students suggested working on clefs via:

• Memorization - The most widely used method uses flash cards or other repetitive devices to practice identifying notes on each clef to ensure a quick and efficient memorization.
• Relative note identifications - Another student remembers one important note for each clef and then visually “counts” through the alphabet upward or downward to find pitches in unfamiliar clefs. One student suggested remembering where C is and counting by steps (letter names), but another suggested memorizing how thirds are stacked to move around more quickly. While this is a reasonable method for beginning to familiarize yourself with clefs, it will ultimately be too slow and inconsistent to be practical.
• The final suggestion was to determine the relationship of your weaker clefs to your strongest clef, and then use this to read in the clef. For example, if you are primarily comfortable in treble-clef, you could remember that alto-clef moves all of the pitches down by a step relative to treble clef. (This ignores octave displacement, of course.) In this case, if you read the alto clef as a treble clef but up a step, this compensates and gives you a quick visual method for reading the clef. Like the relative note identification method above, this could be slow or inconsistent, but if one regularly transposes, this could be used.