Staff (music)

Staff (music)

In standard Western musical notation, the staff, or stave, is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that each represent a different musical pitch—or, in the case of a percussion staff, different percussion instruments. Appropriate music symbols, depending upon the intended effect, are placed on the staff according to their corresponding pitch or function. Musical notes are placed by pitch, percussion notes are placed by instrument, and rests and other symbols are placed by convention.

A single vertical line drawn to the left of multiple staffs creates a "system", indicating that the music on all the staffs is to be played simultaneously. A "bracket" is an additional straight line joining staffs, to show groupings of instruments that function as a unit, such as the string section of an orchestra. A "brace" is used to join multiple staffs that represent a single instrument, such as a piano, organ, harp, or marimba. Sometimes, a second bracket is used to show instruments grouped in pairs, such as the first and second oboes, or the first and second violins in an orchestra. In some cases, a brace is used for this purpose instead of a bracket.

The absolute pitch of each line for a non-percussive stave is determined by the placement of an appropriate clef symbol at the appropriate vertical position on the left-hand side of the staff. For example, the treble clef, also known as the G clef, is placed upon the second line (counting upwards), fixing that line as the pitch first G above 'middle C'.

The lines and spaces are numbered from bottom to top; the bottom line is the first line and the top line is the fifth line.

The musical staff is analogous to a mathematical graph of pitch with respect to time. Pitches of notes are given by their vertical position on the staff and notes to the left are played before notes to the right. Unlike a graph, however, the number of semitones represented by a vertical step from a line to an adjacent space depends on the key, and the exact timing of the beginning of each note is not directly proportional to its horizontal position; rather, exact timing is encoded by the musical symbol chosen for each note in addition to the tempo.

A time signature to the right of the clef indicates the relationship between timing counts and note symbols, while bar lines group notes on the staff into measures.