Reading and writing music - leger lines - stratospheric or subterranean

[Serial_Apologist]

Please - no 15va!!!

(I've just been given a [piano] score to learn full of them and it's a right pain...)

School punishment: for not doing your practice, you must write a thousand leger lines!

[Roslynmuse]

School punishment: for not doing your practice, you must write a thousand leger lines!

[Richard Barrett]

Just write it out with 8va or 15 (if in the right hand) and 8 if in the base!

There are other instruments besides the piano, y'know.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

There are other instruments besides the piano, y'know.

Yes. 8va and 15 make more sense to keyboard players as the fingerings and spacings are the same at different octaves. It's quite different for woodwind and strings, so in some ways leger lines are more intuitive for them.

[Jonathan]

There are other instruments besides the piano, y'know.

True, my tablet was misbehaving and I just hit "post" - I intended to add "for pianos" or something like that to the end of the sentence!

[Dave2002]

Yes. 8va and 15 make more sense to keyboard players as the fingerings and spacings are the same at different octaves. It's quite different for woodwind and strings, so in some ways leger lines are more intuitive for them.

That's quite an interesting point. I think for flute players it doesn't make much difference in the lower 2 octaves, but above that most would treat the notation for the third octave differently - more leger lines indicating the somewhat different fingering up there as well as the tighter embouchure. The fingering for clarinets is quite different in different registers, so encountering an 8va mark might be confusing, though I'm guessing a really good player could either do that, or learn to do it in next to no time.

The comment re sight reading earlier would also be relevant - no point in needlessly introducing a few extra milliseconds of brain processing time to confuse players if that can be avoided - surely - or do composers think performers need to be kept "on their toes" and need extra mental stimulation? Perhaps that keeps dementia at bay.

[kea]

Within piano music, probably because of their occurrence in a good deal of the repertoire, I don't have any trouble sightreading anything up to five leger lines below or above the staff (E6 or A0, at least as pianists account for pitch [i.e. C4 = middle C]); for the remaining 2/3rds of an octave an 8va is better. For other instruments, I have no idea. Flautists will complain a great deal about any note higher than D6 regardless of whether it's written with an 8va or not, and I'm fairly sure I've seen loco F6s in violin parts. And yes, 8va should be avoided in clarinet parts where possible, though I suppose any clarinetist capable of playing a written D6 would also be capable of deciphering an 8va line. (Have never seen a note lower than A0 in a tuba part, though I'm sure Richard Barrett has asked for one at some point.)

[Dave2002]

Have never seen a note lower than A0 in a tuba part, though I'm sure Richard Barrett has asked for one at some point.

The notation could be extended downwards - for example C-2, which would be about 4.1Hz - see https://pages.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html I think using conventional instruments. A 64 foot organ pipe would go down to around 8Hz - effectively C-1, though according to this page http://www.nazard.co.uk/organ.html if it were stopped it could go down to C-2.

Synthesisers could generate "sounds" down to low frequencies - though I'm not sure what the LFO range of a usual synth is, and LFOs are often used to modulate other sounds, rather than directly produce output. I think human hearing - as we know it - doesn't really go much below 20 Hz, but lower frequencies can be felt as chest vibrations. It is thought that some marine animals, such as whales can detect lower frequency vibrations - perhaps down to 12Hz.

My calculations suggest that C0 is 9 leger lines below the stave on the bass clef.