Ledger Lines

[scalpy]

For a number of years now I've been doing pit work for various local theatre groups or sitting in with revue style bands with charts. I normally get given a piano part to read but try as I might I can't get used to all the ledger lines, especially below the stave. Piano players are often reading 3 staves as they support the melody and I'm sweating away trying transpose up and down octaves trying to create a line that makes sense before I run out of neck or frets. Then the song will modulate into Gb major!

Does this do anyone else's nut?

(Treble clef, no worries by the way, so I don't know why practice isn't making perfect.)

[pete.young]

Work in intervals, not in notes!

[BottomEndian]

[quote name='pete.young' post='957761' date='Sep 15 2010, 10:04 PM']Work in intervals, not in notes![/quote]
Indeed. If a melody/bassline/whatever suddenly jumps deep into leger line territory from within the stave, even experienced pianists will have to do a bit of deep concentration to pick out the first few notes... but when the line leads gently off the stave (as so many do) it's easy to follow. That said, as a pianist you get to know by sight at least the first octave of leger lines outside each stave pretty quickly, because it's common territory once you get past the Classical era.

[scalpy]

I do read by intervals most of the time, but once into 3+ ledger lines and key signatures are taken into account my brain's starting to melt! Stupid thing is above the stave is no problem, but there's not much call for that.