Staff (music)

In Western musical notation, the staff (UK also stave; plural: staffs or staves), also occasionally referred to as a pentagram, is a set of horizontal lines (usually five) with spaces between them, that each represent a different musical pitch. However in the case of a percussion staff, there may be from one to five (or perhaps more) lines which denote different percussion instruments, as may the spaces in between. In guitar tab there are up to six (or perhaps more) lines denoting different strings.

Appropriate music symbols, depending on the intended effect, are placed on the staff with the vertical position showing their pitch, percussion instrument or string, and the horizontal position showing their approximate location in time.

The absolute pitch of each line of a pitched staff is indicated by the placement of a clef symbol at the appropriate vertical position on the left-hand side of the staff (possibly modified by conventions for specific instruments). For example, the treble clef, also known as the G clef, is placed on the second line (counting upward), 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 are played from left to 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.