Reading the Staff

Five Lines and Four Spaces

The pattern of lines you have seen above the keyboard is called the staff. It is five lines with four spaces between them, and every note sits either on a line or in a space — never half way. Where a note sits is the whole message: the higher a note sits on the staff, the higher it sounds. That is why the notes climbed upward as you played the scale.

The Treble Clef

The curled symbol at the left-hand end of the staff is the treble clef. It is not decoration: the curl wraps around the second line from the bottom and names that line G, which is why it is also called the G clef. Once you know one line by name, you can count up or down to find any other, because the note names simply keep cycling A to G as you go.

Middle C Sits Below the Staff

Middle C is lower than the bottom line, so it does not fit on the staff at all. Instead it is given its own short line underneath, called a ledger line. Any note too high or too low for the five lines gets ledger lines in the same way. So when a note appears under the staff on a little line of its own, it is not a mistake — it is how the staff reaches past its own edges.