Introduction

What is sheet music, and where does it come from? Hundreds of years ago, there was no standard system for writing out music. Most music was separated between cultures and different regions of the world, and most music was made through experience with the instruments and practices of that culture. If you wanted to play music, you had to learn it from someone else who showed you the music they learned from someone else.

Music notation developed over hundreds of years in Europe as churches developed more church music. This music was a collection of chants and prayers that followed repeated melodic patterns. Notation was first introduced as little inflections or shaped lines above the text in this “music.” The markings didn’t necessarily indicate specific pitches but more so general shapes and ideas. Some churches still use this kind of music.

Eventually, these shapes took a specific form to represent clear pitch relationships. The music reader could get a sense of how the melody would be shaped by the shape of the marking. A curved line upward might indicate the melody when up. A steady line might indicate the pitch stayed the same. The modern staff with notes and rests took form alongside the development of more musical instruments and increased musical literacy.

Modern Staff

The modern musical staff was born over hundreds of years of development and changes. It has five horizontal lines with notes of various types written on these lines and spaces.

The staff is useful for modern music notation becasue it very accurately represents the musical ideas in a visual format. With the musical staff, we can understand which notes to play, how fast they should be played, their rhythm and timing, and more detail about how the music should be expressed.

The musical staff can’t tell us how to be good musicians. That comes from training, developing a good ear for music, and learning from other musicians. Still, the amount of information that can be written into modern musical staff makes it an excellent way for us to learn how to understand musical ideas.

Building Blocks of the Staff

The staff has five horizontal parallel lines to reference how high or low a note will be played. Every line or space represents a different note with a unique letter name.

Music includes a wide range of notes from the lowest bassline to the highest orchestra instrument. One of the most common instruments, the piano, has a range of 88 notes. Thankfully, the piano doesn’t have 88 unique notes, just 12 that repeat.

Musical note names begin with A and go to G. Notes are repeated in a cycle, so after G, we start again with the note A. Every time we repeat the cycle of notes, we find the octave of a note. An octave is when the same pitch is played twice as high or low. Listen to an octave below.

Even though musical notes can range over several octaves, most instruments stay within a smaller range of notes. Instruments are generally divided into two categories: treble instruments and bass instruments. And each has its own unique clef. A clef tells us what notes are represented by the five lines of the staff.

The Treble Clef

Higher-pitched instruments play notes on the treble clef. This clef is sometimes called the G clef because it circles around the second lowest line, which is assigned the note G.

Notes can be placed on a line or a space. Every line and space represents one note in order, with the lower notes on the bottom and the higher notes on the top. We can build out our lines and spaces from the G we have already identified and label each note on the staff. Listen to the ascending notes in the audio example.

Nine notes can be a lot to manage at first. Everyone has their own unique way of learning the music language based on their own learning style. Most of the time, note identification begins with separating the line notes from the space notes. A mnemonic device can be helpful in remembering the names of the notes. You can make up your own unique acronym, but I like “Every Good Boy Does Fine” for the line notes and the word FACE for the space notes.

Line Notes

Space Notes

The Bass Clef

Lower-pitched instruments play notes on the bass clef. This clef is sometimes called the F clef because it centers around the second highest line, which is assigned the note F.

We can build out our bass clef notes based off of the F note we can identify with the F clef. The specific notes that are used for the bass clef are two octaves lower than on the treble clef. But they are also different notes. The bottom line on the treble clef is an E, but on the bass clef, it is a G. These notes are chosen to keep the most commonly played notes on the staff.

Keeping with our mnemonic device, I like to use “Good Boys Do Fine Always” for the line notes and “All Cows Eat Grass” for the space notes. It’s helpful to notice that the note names are off by two letters between the treble and bass clef.

Line Notes

Space Notes

The Grand Staff

When instruments such as the piano play both treble and bass notes, the grand staff is used so all notes can be represented well. The grand staff is also frequently seen in choral music and on a score, a piece of music showing all parts together.

The grand staff has a transition area between the higher treble notes and the lower bass notes. Notes don’t have to be on the staff. They can rest above the staff and even “extend" beyond the staff with ledger lines. These lines help us count the note name based on how many lines a note is outside of the staff.

The grand staff shares a middle C which is written as one ledger line above the bass staff or one ledger line below the treble staff.