Learn the Bass Clef
The bass clef is the symbol at the start of a staff for lower-pitched music. Its two dots mark the F line. On a bass staff, the lines are G, B, D, F and A, the spaces are A, C, E and G, and middle C sits just above.
What is the bass clef?
A staff on its own is just five lines and four spaces. It’s the clef at the start of the line that says which note each line and space stands for.
The bass clef is the clef for lower-pitched music. It’s the second clef most people learn, after the treble clef, and together the two cover almost everything a pianist reads: the treble clef for the right hand and the bass clef for the left.
Here are all the notes on the bass staff, from the bottom line to the top line:
Why it is called the F clef
The bass clef is also called the F clef. Like the treble clef, it started out as a letter: a G for the treble clef, an F for the bass. Over centuries of handwritten and printed music, the F turned into the curl and two dots we use today.
The shape still marks its note. The clef’s two dots sit either side of the fourth line from the bottom, and that line is F, the F just below middle C.
That makes F the easiest note on the bass staff to find: it’s the line between the dots. From there you can step up or down to any other note, just as G works as your anchor on the treble staff.
Who uses the bass clef?
The bass clef is used for instruments and voices in the lower range, including:
- Piano, for the left hand
- Cello and double bass
- Bass guitar
- Bassoon, trombone and tuba
- Timpani
- Baritone and bass voices
If you play one of these, the bass clef is your main clef. If you play the piano, you’ll need both.
The notes on the bass clef
The bass staff works exactly like the treble staff. Every note is one of the seven letters A to G, and moving up from a line to the next space, or from a space to the next line, takes you to the next letter. Only the starting point is different: the bottom line is G instead of E.
As with the treble clef, the quickest way to read the notes is in two groups, the lines and the spaces, plus a few landmark notes. For a full chart, see bass clef notes.
The lines: G, B, D, F, A
From bottom to top, the five lines of the bass staff are G, B, D, F and A. A common way to remember them is “Good Boys Do Fine Always.”
More ways to remember them, and to read them without counting, are on the bass clef lines page.
The spaces: A, C, E, G
The four spaces, from bottom to top, are A, C, E and G. The classic saying is “All Cows Eat Grass.”
See bass clef spaces for more.
Middle C and notes outside the staff
Notes just outside the bass staff follow the same line-space pattern. Three are worth knowing by sight:
- Middle C sits on a short ledger line just above the staff. It’s the same middle C that sits on a ledger line just below the treble staff.
- B sits in the space just above the top line, between the top line and middle C.
- F hangs in the space just below the bottom line. It’s an octave lower than the F between the clef’s dots.
With F between the dots and middle C on its ledger line, you’re never far from a note you know.
Bass clef and treble clef
The bass and treble clefs use the same five-line staff but name its lines and spaces differently, so the same position means a different note. A handy shortcut: a bass clef note is two letters later than the treble clef note in the same position. The bottom line is E in treble and G in bass; the bottom space is F in treble and A in bass. (The bass note is also lower, by more than an octave.)
Piano music joins a treble staff and a bass staff with a brace. This is called the grand staff. Middle C sits right in the middle of it: one ledger line below the treble staff, one ledger line above the bass staff. It’s the same note, written in two places.
If you already read the treble clef, the bass clef comes much faster the second time, because you already know how lines, spaces and landmarks work.
Practice bass clef notes
On the bass clef practice page, notes slide across a bass staff for you to name before they reach the line. Level 1 covers the seven notes from the C in the second space up to the B just above the staff. Level 2 runs from the F below the staff up to middle C, which covers every note on this page.
Trebly keeps your bass notes separate from your treble ones, so it learns which bass notes you find hard and brings them back more often. When you’re ready, set Clef to Both in Training, and notes arrive in either clef, which is good practice for reading piano music.
Trebly’s lessons, Arcade and Test use the treble clef for now.