Ledger Lines:

In the previous lessons we have learnt that notes are either placed on the lines or in the spaces of the stave and each of the notes have a different pitch depending on where they are placed and the clef they are in. But what happens when the notes are too high or low to fit on the stave? That's where ledger lines come in.

What are ledger lines?: Ledger lines are used to extend the range of the clef in both directions. They are short horizontal lines that go above or below the stave. By doing this it allows for a musician to read notes that are both higher and lower than the range of the stave. Ledger lines work exactly like staves with notes following the letters A to G (Remember after G the notes repeat back to A).

Problems with ledger lines: The major flaw of ledger lines is that it can be very difficult to read music that uses lots of ledger lines. In previous lessons we have discussed how musicians get round this problem by having clefs (See Unit 1 Lesson 2). However having to read music in two different clefs can be very confusing so another way musicians prevent the extensive use of ledger lines is by notating on the score that the notes are meant to be played an octave above/below (see Unit 1 Lesson 5). See the picture on the left for an example.

Example:

Here is an extract from the bass line of Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder (you can hear this at 1:07 in the video). As you can see in the second bar the bass is playing very high notes. We can tell this by counting up from the first note in bar 2 which is a B and counting up each line and space until you reach the note you want to figure out. For example the final note of bar 2 is a D sharp. This also points out the major flaw with lots of ledger lines as it takes time to figure out the notes with lots of ledger lines.

The ledger lines allows for the musician to know which notes to play. It also saves the musician from reading the music in two different clefs as that would be very confusing. Because the bass primarily uses lower notes, ledger lines are used very rarely so there is no point in switching to a higher clef.

Why do we need ledger lines?:

Without ledger lines the notes outside of the clef will just be floating dots which obviously makes it very hard to tell the difference between the notes. The other problem musician would have would be that the music would be changing clefs constantly, which makes a musicians job very difficult as they would have to switch between reading different notes in different clefs.