Reading Music: The Stave & Clefs

You already know the twelve notes and where they live on the keyboard. Reading music is the skill of seeing those notes on the page. It starts with one simple idea: a note's height on a set of lines tells you how high or low it sounds.

The stave

Music is written on a stave - five horizontal lines and the four spaces between them. (Americans call it a staff; the two words mean exactly the same thing.) The higher a note sits on the stave, the higher it sounds; the lower it sits, the lower it sounds. Each line and each space is one step up the musical alphabet, so notes climb line, space, line, space - A, B, C, D and on.

Clefs fix the pitches

Five bare lines don't yet tell you which notes they are - that is the job of a clef, the symbol at the start of every stave. The treble clef is also called the G-clef: its curl wraps around the second line up, marking it as the G above middle C. The bass clef is the F-clef: its two dots sit either side of the F below middle C. Each clef names itself, which is the quickest way to get your first landmark note.

Try it

Play any key below and watch its note appear on the stave. Switch between the treble, bass and grand stave to see the same note land in different places, and turn on a key signature to preview how the written spelling shifts.

Reading the notes: landmarks first

Beginners are often taught a mnemonic for every line and space. On the treble stave the lines, bottom to top, are E G B D F ("Every Good Boy Deserves Favour") and the spaces spell F A C E. On the bass stave the lines are G B D F A ("Good Boys Deserve Favour Always") and the spaces A C E G ("All Cows Eat Grass").

The grand stave and middle C

Piano music uses both clefs at once, braced together as a grand stave - treble on top for the right hand, bass below for the left. The two meet at middle C, which sits on a short ledger line - an extra line added just for notes that fall outside the five. Middle C on a ledger line below the treble stave and middle C on a ledger line above the bass stave are the same key: the grand stave's shared pivot.

Middle C on the grand stave

Sharps and flats on the page

A black key is written by adding an accidental to a letter: a sharp (♯) raises it, a flat (♭) lowers it, and a natural (♮) cancels either. The same black key can be written two ways - C♯ and D♭ are one key - and which spelling is correct depends on the key signature. That is a whole topic of its own: see Key Signatures once you are comfortable here.

With pitch on the page sorted, the other half of reading is timing - how long each note lasts. That is Note Values & Rhythm.