Is the C represented on a line below the staff same as the C on the third space in the staff? If so why are the ledger lines used, when they make reading the music slightly difficult?
Edit: I am an amateur music enthusiast who just started learning violin. The youtube tutorials I watched seemed to imply that they were just same as the other notes. If someone can point me to some good yet concise resource to understand the basics, it would be great.
No, they are two different C's, an octave apart.
But we sometimes use ledger lines even when notes COULD be written within a stave.
It's easy to see why they're needed when the notes go too high for the treble stave.
But why do we do this
When we could do this?
Well, it just sometimes clarifies where the musical line goes, and which hand plays what (in keyboard music).
Imagine, once upon a time, someone used eleven lines, ten spaces, to represent mostly the notes that could be sung. It would work, but got quite confusing. Inventor B had a better idea. "Let's get rid of the middle line1" A replied "But we need it for notes on middle C" B then says "True, but if we leave that line out, it can always go back smaller if and when middle C notes are played."
So, we have the two lots of 5 lines, and a little ledger line for when C needs it. When there's notes below that that need to be written when there's only a treble clef available, then the next two or three lines down - those that usually belong to the bass clef - are used as well. Guitarists are used to seeing a note in the space below three ledger lines - it's their bottom E.
It would be a pain when writing for the bottom strings of a guitar to suddenly find you had to write it in bass clef. And it's the same the other way, at the top of the treble clef. There's a way around that, though, using '8va' or 15va'.
And, no, the two C notes quoted are not the same - they're an octave apart.
The ledger lines (used for middle C) are due to the origin of musical staves. The stave used to have 11 lines, middle C being right in the middle. As instruments and the skill of instrumentalists/singers progressed, having such a large score became too cluttered so they split it into 2 5-line staves with a middle line bridging the two staves.
The C below the stave (assuming treble clef) is an octave below the one 3 spaces up. And it is an octave higher than the C in the second space of a bass clef stave (picturing a 'standard' piano score).
Ledger lines have also become a concept due to the development of instruments, being able to play higher and lower. Remember the first scores were for voices so the range of written music did not have to be too large.
