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I have a simple question. I guess i am confused by the many ledger lines below the treble clef (circled in red) are these notes normally on the bass clef. Doesn't the treble and bass share the middle C. And what keys are played with the left and right hand.

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Are the treble notes? | E CE CE AF AF | GC GDC CD |

Are the bass notes? | A F | C B |

The treble staff does sound right or am I missing something.

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  • A good way to read this easily is to recognize the "shape" of the intervals (a 6th, then a 3rd, then a 4th, etc) and then focus on the pitch of the top notes, which are only middle C and A. If the music is continually flipping from one staff to the other, that is just as hard to read - with the extra confusion of figuring out which hand plays which notes.
    – user19146
    Aug 19, 2017 at 22:48

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They are notes below the treble (g) clef. As you wrote, E CE CE AF AF | GC GDC CD. Think of them as an extension of the staves in the treble clef. So a note sitting just below the bottom normal staff line is a D, a note sitting 'on' the first 'ledger line' (where the ledger line is appearing to go thru the note or strike it out maybe) is a C. Thus a note sitting just BELOW the first 'ledger line' below the g-clef is a B, etc etc. For reference, that low E note is the same note as the open low E string on a normally tuned guitar, which sits just below the third ledger line beneath the g clef, and about 1 1/2 octaves below middle C. I hope this was in some way helpful and answers your question, if not, please accept my apologies feel free to disregard.

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Yes, you've got the notes right. Piano music is often written like this in order to make it clear what is played by each hand (though it's not at all a firm rule that everything in the top stave is RH, everything in the bottom one LH).

Experienced players don't really count the lines, they take in the shape of the chord - just like you read this word as 'word', not a laboriously splet-out 'W..O..R..D'.

When we buy song copies online, with a choice of keys, this sort of thing sometimes happens! The transposition system isn't perfect :-)

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    This is what happens when scores are thrown together any old way using computers, without any human thought involved!
    – user19146
    Aug 19, 2017 at 22:47
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    Yup! Though we we should remind that the original example was commonplace and perfectly acceptable.
    – Laurence
    Aug 19, 2017 at 23:34

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