Lesson video

Hi, I am Dr.

Southall, and I'm gonna be teaching you this music unit about harmonic progressions and baselines.

So let's begin.

In this lesson, we're going to be identifying pitches in the base clef and performing and finding notes C to C on the keyboard.

There are three key phrases for this lesson.

The first is base clef.

This is a symbol used to notate pictures below middle C, and it's the partner of the treble clef.

And you can see what it looks like to the right hand side.

The second is stave.

This is the five horizontal lines with four spaces, and that represents different musical pitches.

And the third is the F position.

This is a hand position when playing the keyboard, and the most important feature is having your little finger on the F if playing with the left hand.

It's two parts to this lesson.

The first is understanding the bass clef.

The musical alphabet is made up of seven letters, A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.

But on the keyboard we commonly consider C our home note rather than A.

Watch this video to explain.

(piano playing) The treble clef shows higher pitched notes.

On a keyboard, this usually means to play with your right hand.

And for the lower pitch notes and notes played with the left hand, the base cleft can be used.

And you see the symbols look different for each of these.

The base clef is used for notes below middle C.

To play in the C position with the left hand, our little finger rests on C.

And you can see in our diagram that this is also indicated with a five, and the five is for our little finger.

So that five on the left hand side of the keyboard is the C, our resting position for the base clef.

Let's check for understanding.

What are the notes of C major? Is it a, C, D, E, F, G, A, B? Is it b, A, B, c, D, E, F, G? Or is it c, C, D, E, F, G, G, A, B? Well done, the correct answer was the first one, C, D, E, F, G, A, B are the notes of C major.

True or false: The base clef shows notes above middle C and uses the right hand on the keyboard? Well, that's false.

The reason why is because the base cleft starts with the left hand and our little finger on C.

The base cleft uses the same notes in the musical alphabet, but the notes are in a different place on the lines and spaces on the stave.

What shapes or patterns do you notice to help us remember what the notes look like? In the base clef, middle C sits on its own line above the stave and in the treble clef, it sits below the stave.

So you can imagine these two staves sitting together one on top of the other.

Every note has its own unique space or line.

When we start to play notes from notation, we get quicker at reading them.

B sits on the line, G sits in the space.

A is on the top line.

F is on the line where the dot of the clef goes through.

Let's check for understanding.

What is this note? Is it a low C, a middle C or an F? The answer is C.

It's an F note.

How do we remember the middle C in a base clef? Is it a, it's on its own line above the stave; b, it's on its own line below the stave; or c, it sits in the middle of the stave? The answer is a, it sits on its own line above the stave.

How do we identify the notes of the base clef? Have a think and write down some ideas.

Well, you may have come up with any of these.

Each has its own unique line or space.

We get used to recognizing these as play them on a keyboard or other instruments, and we can also count down the lines and spaces from middle C.

Here's a task for you.

Look at the notes on this stave in the base clef and see if you can fill in the note names for each note.

Good luck! Well, your answers should look like this.

We have a C at the beginning, which is our middle C because it sits on a line above this stave.

Then we have A, G, F, B, G, F, and A.

If you didn't get all of those right, do check the ones that you got wrong and see if you can understand why.

Otherwise, let's move on.

Part two: Applying the base cleft to keyboard performance.

We need to develop our left hand keyboard technique to play base cleft notes below middle C, such as the ones shown in the picture.

Let's watch the video for a tutorial.

(piano playing) If we play with our hand in the F position, we can also use the finger prompts to work out the notes of any melody.

So you can see in this picture, the finger prompts are below the notes and they indicate which finger should be on each note.

Let's watch the video for a different explanation.

(piano playing) Now notice that hand shape the fingers are curved over the keys, and there's a relatively straight line between the little finger, the wrist, and the elbow.

Let's check for understanding.

In which picture is the hand in the correct F position? Well done the answer is C.

Check where those fingers are.

Time for some more practice.

We're gonna practice playing the following short melodies on the keyboard.

And our success criteria are: finding the F position first with your left hand; use the finger prompts and the notation to help identify the order of the notes; play each note the same length; and practice slowly at first.

Now we've got some melodies to practice.

So there are three different melodies here.

Each one has its own accompanying performance that I'll play for you next, but I want you to listen to them carefully.

(soft clacking) (piano playing) (soft clacking) (piano playing) (soft clacking) (piano playing) Remember, you can rewind this video to listen to those clips as many times as you want, but we have two more to come, this time without the number prompts.

So this time you have only the notes to work from and your knowledge of where those notes sit on the keyboard.

We'll play the videos so you've got something to work from.

Good luck! (soft clacking) (piano playing) (soft clacking) (piano playing) How did you find that? I suspect it's a little bit tricky.

It's quite hard to use your left hand if you're used to just playing with your right hand.

But let's have a little reflection about your performance.

Here are some prompt questions for you to think about.

Did you play in the F position with your left hand? How do you know? Was your performance accurate? And were the notes all equal length? Did you perform it slowly at first? And which melodies of the ones that we showed you, did you learn? Are you comfortable with using the number and finger prompts to work out the notes? And did you learn a melody using the base cleft notation to find the correct notes? Well done today! It's a tricky lesson with this different cleft and using your left hand instead of your right to play some different notes.

I hope you did really, really well.

Let's have a quick summary of our understanding of this lesson.

The first point is that the base cleft shows the lower pitch notes on the stave that are usually played by the left hand, and it's a different symbol to the treble clef.

Each of the base clef notes have their own symbol on the stave.

And we've played pieces with the left hand using the notes F to C, and the left hand is in the F position when the little finger is on F Well done.

I'll see you next time.