The Grand Staff 'mirror' Trick

[bellowbelle]

 

Below is the text with this photo, at myPBase photo site:

 

Grand Staff 'Mirror'

 

As a mostly-treble-cleff reader (and true to that only when I must be), I find it challenging to include the bass cleff on my 'reading list.' I think only piano and organ players bother to use the whole, entire Grand Staff.

 

However....

 

It's there, it exists; and I do in fact use it at times. So, I found a way to think of it that's easy for me. I consider the 'mirror' relationships of the intervals as mapped-out on the grand staff, since they do fall into place in a repeating pattern of opposites. For instance, by remembering that the 9th and the M7 are paired, as long as I can find either of them on the upper, treble-cleff staff, I'm all set -- I know what the mirror-image of each one is, on the lower, bass-cleff staff.

 

If you aren't one to consider intervals much, then...hmm, well, maybe this doesn't get you 'unstuck' at all! But, if, like me, you use intervals and their inter-relationships as reference points, then, you probably see how this little trick has helped me out a great deal.

 

Middle C (a unison, here) marks the center of the horizontal 'fold line' -- if you want to think of it that way. The next tone of the treble-cleff staff, the D (which is the major 9th in the key of C, and usually just referred to as 'the ninth'), corresponds with the B (referred to as the major seventh in the key of C) of the bass-cleff staff. The E of the upper staff corresponds with the A of the lower staff -- etc..

 

These aren't all exactly the same as what's usually called 'interval inversions,' as far as their relationships go; for instance, the usual 'interval inversion' for a sixth (presumed to be a major sixth, unless specified) is a minor third (m3) -- NOT a major third (referred to simply as 'the third.). (Here, in this Grand Staff 'Mirror,' the M6 matches up with the M3.)

 

The inversions, here, though, are at least close enough to the usual that if you already have those 'down' in your memory, it makes this 'mirror trick' all the easier. Actually, there are only a total of three inversions, here, if you study this a bit...and, of the three, two are 'almost' direct/usual interval inversions, and one (the 4th with the 5th) is the same as a direct inversion.

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...Just something 'To Whom It May Concern' (..and for whatever reason ).