How to Read Bass Music Notation & Symbols

Piano Sheet Music with Bass Clef on Bottom

Bass music notation is written on the bass clef of the music staff, using the same letter names for notes as the treble clef, along with the same symbols used in traditional music notation. Bass notes are used to write music for instruments that play in the bass range, including bass guitar, the left hand notes of a piano and tuba. Reading and writing bass notation for anyone playing a bass-clef instrument can improve his skills as a musician and help open doors to more musical opportunities.

Things You'll Need

• Bass sheet music

Instructions

1. Examine a piece of bass music written for your instrument. If you don't play a specific bass instrument, a piece of music written for bass guitar or the left hand of the piano will work for this purpose. Look at the beginning, and notice the bass clef sign, which looks like a big comma with a colon after it. Any time you see this written on the music staff, you know the notes are bass notes.

2. Read the key signature and time signature the same for bass clef as for treble clef. The key signature is after the clef sign and consists of a series of sharp or flat signs written on the lines and spaces to indicate the key of a song. The absence of sharp or flat signs means the song is in the key of C. The time signature, written as 4/4 for common time, tells you how many beats there are per measure of music.

3. Identify the note names by their placement on the music staff. The bass music staff consists of five lines and four spaces like the treble clef staff, but the lines and spaces represent different note names than the treble clef. The basic bass clef staff lines represent the notes G-B-D-F-A going from the bottom of the clef to the top, and the spaces represent the notes A-C-E-G from bottom to top. An easy way to remember these notes is to assign a simple saying to them: Grizzly Bears Don't Fly Airplanes for the lines and All Cars Eat Gas for the spaces.

4. Apply the same rules of note value to bass music as you do to any other music. A whole note equals four beats in common time; a half note equals two beats; a quarter note is one beat; an eighth note is a half beat. Each of these note values has a rest value that corresponds in time.

5. Identify whole notes as a circle without color or a stem; half notes look like a whole note except with a stem; a quarter note looks like a half note except the notehead is colored black; eighth notes look like a quarter note, but there is a small curved tail on the stem. Two or more eighth notes together can be attached by a straight black line linking the notes and eliminating the tails. A whole rest is a small black bar on the underside of the fourth line of the staff; a half rest looks like a whole rest, but it sits on top of the third line of the staff; a quarter rests resembles the profile of a human looking to the right; an eighth rest is a slight diagonal line with a tail that slightly resembles a comma turned with the curve facing up. Stems on notes are on the right side and pointing up for notes written below the third line on the staff. Stems are on the left and facing down if they are written on the third line of the staff or higher. You can find examples of these notes in a basic note reading book or online free of charge.

References

• Cyberfret Bass: Reading Standard Bass Notation
• Piano Lessons Info: Want a Piano Notes Chart?