If I use the word register as I progress through the course, just remember that I’m talking about a higher pitch range or pitch area. In music, we often refer to the different pitch areas of the instrument as registers, such as the ‘higher register’ or the ‘lower register’. Likewise, you may find grand staffs utilizing two bass clefs for particularly low pieces. For example, if the left hand of the piano is playing much higher than usual, and both hands are playing high notes. You may find arrangements where both parts are written in treble clef. However, just because a grand staff most commonly has both treble and bass clefs, this isn’t always the case. Reading a grand staff can be challenging, because it requires you to be able to read music in both clefs at the same time, which can take a lot of practice. This indicates that both parts should be played together on one instrument, rather than by separate instruments. When two lines are connected together with a brace that looks like this, it is called a grand staff. You can see here that the two separate parts – the left hand and the right hand, are written on separate lines, but are still close together. Let’s look at a piece of piano sheet music. When it comes to piano, this usually results in the bass clef being played with the left hand, and the treble clef usually being played with the right hand. Some instruments however, such as the piano, harp, organ, celeste and marimba span such a large range of notes, they often use two clefs at once – usually the treble and the bass clef. We know already that most instruments only ever use one clef at a time – usually either the treble clef, or the bass clef. So far in this course, we have already talked about the staff, and the notes that make up the treble clef.Īnd although we’ll still be focusing on the treble clef until we get much further into the course, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the staff and how to begin reading musical arrangements. F1 is also known as “contra F” or “double pedal F.Note: If you aren’t already familiar with the different clefs in music, please read this post about clefs, and how they affect a musical score.

Names of the C-Notes: C0: triple pedal C C1: double pedal C C2: pedal C C3: bass C C4: middle C C5: treble C C6: top C or high C C7: double top C or double high C C8: triple top C or triple high CĪll of the notes may be called out using these systems.Octave Names (pictured above): C0 - B0: sub-contra octave ( A0 is the lowest pitch on a full piano) C1 - B1: contra octave C2 - B2: great octave C3 - B3: small octave C4 - B4: one-line octave, or 2nd small octave (contains both middle C and A440) C5 - B5: two-line octave, or 3rd small octave C6 - B6: three-line octave, or 4th small octave C7 - B7: four-line octave, or 5th small octave C8 - B8: five-line octave, or 6th small octave ( C8 is the highest pitch on a full piano).

Each octave, as well as each C, has its own universal name. In pitch notation, the notes C4, D4, and B4 belong to the same pitch class, which is the fourth octave.īut, pitch notation is just one way of referencing notes. Pitch class simply refers to an octave from one C to the next. Each octave begins on C so C3 is in the third or “small octave,” and C4 is in the fourth or “one-line octave.”.

Middle c