The course › Unit 5: The bass clef and the grand staff
Lesson 29 of 72 · Seven landmarks to find your way around the whole keyboard
You already know five landmarks: Bass C, Bass F, middle C, Treble G and Treble C. Let’s add the two farthest away: Low C, two ledger lines below the bass clef, and High C, two ledger lines above the treble clef.
Notice the symmetry around middle C: Bass C is in the 2nd space counting from the bottom, Treble C is in the 2nd space counting from the top. And the two outer Cs each have two ledger lines.
Low C, Bass C, Bass F, middle C, Treble G, Treble C, High C.
Did you know?: A piano has 88 keys, from an A at the very bottom to a C at the very top. With these seven landmarks, you already cover four octaves: the heart of the keyboard.
Play each landmark at its exact place: on a four-octave keyboard, the right octave is what counts!
Landmarks aren’t only useful on their own: from each one, you can read its neighbors. A step up or down (a 2nd), a skip (a 3rd)… and you can find any note without counting all the way from middle C.
Around Treble C: D (a step up, 4th line), B (a step down), E (a skip up, 4th space).
In the bass clef: G (a step above F), A (a skip above F, 5th line), B (a step below Bass C, 2nd line).
Why this way: This is the landmark approach (Frances Clark; Faber calls them guide notes): you learn a handful of notes really well, and read all the others by intervals from them. Ledger lines stay rare: only the outer Cs have two.
The first note is a landmark: find it, then read the interval. A step or a skip, up or down?
Each of these notes is a step or a skip away from a landmark. Find the nearest landmark, then count.
The seven landmarks, on both staffs, in 60 seconds. Aim carefully: the exact octave is what counts!
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