How to Read the Base Clef

Video Transcript

"Hi everyone, Kevin Smith back, TubaLove, doing a typical practice session, and I'm just going to briefly talk about reading in base clef. This book's probably got a better ah. If the camera can focus in on this just this area here, you've got down in the middle there. You've got this very kind of pretty little curly thing. That's treble clef. And that's what some higher pitched instruments read in. That there is what's called base clef. Whenever you see that little kind of like curly thing there, that is called base clef. And that is almost exclusively what tubas players play in. If I, I advocate learning both tuba and base clef. It may never really even be totally necessary for reading tuba music for a band or an orchestra or whatever. But what that will do is allow you just to feel like you got a broader sense. If someone says, "Hey I need you to play this trombone part." And occasionally you'll see a trombone part that's written in treble clef or something else that's written in treble clef. And I certainly don't have enough time to go into detail. But the difference is it comes to differences of thirds. So in a base clef, that note would be a B or a B flat whatever the case may be. In treble clef it's a G. So that could be a little confusing at first, but if you're learning especially I would say you're doing most of your reading in base clef. If you can learn how to play treble clef too, if you play the piano a little bit on the side you're always using base and treble clef at the same time. And that'll make it that much easier for you anyway. But anyway this is a tuba; it plays in base clef because it's a base."