Bass Staff Basics

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and in this lesson,
we're going to be learning how to recognize and identify notes on the bass staff.
Remember, that as a pianist, you have two types of clefs.
We have the treble clef for all the higher notes on the piano, from middle C and up,
but for these low notes down here, we use the bass clef.
Middle C and down is bass clef kingdom.
So, let's get started by checking out our bass staff.

Here we have the grand staff.
Remember, the grand staff is really two staves put together.
Up here, we have our treble staff for the high notes, and here's our treble clef.
Down here, we have our bass clef, which creates a bass staff
where we can draw notes that are intended to be played low on your piano.
Well, take your finger with me, and trace the outline of this bass clef.
Okay, and then these two dots are very important,
because they show you where the base F line is. So take your finger with me,
and trace it along this line. That line is bass F. So any note you see on that line,
like these, means to play or sing a bass F.

Now remember, there's also an important line up in the treble clef.
Remember, this line that goes through the swirl of the treble clef
shows you where treble G is. So these blue notes that I'm placing,
these are line notes that are on the treble G line,
so that means to sing or play treble G.

Now, another note we've learned so far is called middle C, and middle C
is on the first ledger line below the treble staff, or, it can also be the first ledger line
above your bass staff. Now, one thing to note is middle C doesn't necessarily,
literally, mean it's exactly in the middle of these two staves. It's kind of called, well,
it's called middle C because it's nearest the middle of your piano,
and it is in between these two staves. But this first ledger line above bass staff,
this first ledger line below treble staff, this is really the exact same note.

Now, let's check out where some of these notes are on your piano.
So, on your piano, remember middle C is the C nearest the middle of your piano,
and bass F will be this first F below middle C, right here. So, on your own piano,
can you find and play your middle C, and say middle C when you play it?
Good, and then find your bass F, and say F as you play that. That's bass F.
Now, as you know there are many C's on a piano. This just happens to be middle C,
but we also have this bass C down here that I'd like to learn today
with you on the bass staff.

So let's come back to the bass staff and find where this bass C is.
Now you know that middle C is right here, and you know that bass F is right here,
and bass C is even lower than bass F. Well, remember that notes can be on
either lines or spaces. So if I go from this line to this space, that's a step down.
And in the musical alphabet, if you think, what is a step below F,
we have to think backward in the musical alphabet. So it goes F,
then E is a step below, then we can step down back to this line, which gives us D,
and then we step down one more time, and now we've made it to base C.
So I'm going to take out these helper notes, and now we can see that,
if we go up two spaces, one, two, on our bass staff, then we will land on base C.
Point to this note on the screen and say with me, bass C.
So let's practice finding base C on your piano.
I always just use middle C as my reference, and I know that bass C
is the first C below that. So, find your middle C one more time,
and then find the nearest C going down on your piano, and play it and say bass C.

Now, there are certain notes that I call guide notes.
They're notes I want you to know so well that you can see them
and instantly recognize them. And these notes in the bass staff
that are your guide notes are this bass F–easy to find because of these two dots-
middle C-easy to find because it's on this single ledger line above the staff-
and bass C, which is pretty easy to find
because it's just one, two spaces from the bottom.
That second space, that's your bass C. So point with me and let's name each one.
Say it with me: bass C, bass F, middle C.

Now, the great thing about having these kinds of guide notes
is because they can help you figure out any other note.
For example, if you saw this pattern written on a staff,
you could say, oh, I know that that's bass C,
and I can see that this steps up to the next line, so that must be a D.
Because you know your musical alphabet, this is really easy.
After C comes D. Ah, it steps up again, so this must be E.
And this, it's one of our guide notes, so you know that must be an F,
or, you could have just thought, oh, a step above E is F.
And then finally, what's a step above F? Can yo ...