Viola clef is unfamiliar to many. Viola is a musical instrument which stays in the middle of the violin instrument family. It has an analogous look to the violin though bigger than it yet it is smaller than the distinguished cello. Violinists use the Treble or G-clef and the bass or F-clef is for cello enthusiasts. But if you use the viola in the viola clef which is a musical notation that puts the middle C on the third of the five lines of the staff. To efficiently read a viola or C- clef, below are basics you should know;
- Musical staff
Get yourself acquainted to the musical staff. A musical staff has 5 lines and four spaces. The musical notes start from letters A to G. When you go higher, the notes will recur in a higher register. When you move up from a line to space then you have moved up by a note. Moreover, when you move up from one line to the next line then you have moved up two notes. When you descend the musical staff the same idea still applies.
- Chords
With this in mind, you can now get acquainted with the chords. The viola clef has its middle line note as C always. When you ascend one note up, your note is D. two steps up will land you on note E. Note B is one step on the downside and A is the note when you move down by two steps.
- Ledger lines
Moreover, the ledger lines on the viola clef are where notes which are either very high or very low to be accommodated by the staff are displayed. On viola clef, the lines will never go lower than one ledger line and the Middle C neither will they be too high than two ledger lines over the highest line on the musical staff.
Use this tips to study your viola music then the result is a curve which points directly to the middle note C. This makes the viola clef a C-clef or an Alto Clef denoted as c, g, d’, a’.
