Notes & Staff

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The Staff

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The Clefs

The clef is an indicator of which notes the staff represents. The purpose of different clefs is to accomodate instruments or vocals of different ranges. In modern music, only four clefs are used regularly: treble clef, bass clef, alto clef, and tenor clef.

One thing to note about all of these clefs is that they dont move, the staff lines move. Each of the following clefs are tied to a particulr note and the adjacent notes. This is apparent in the Clef Ranges image below.

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The clef used depends upon the range to be scored. The only time clefs are combined is with the G-Clef (Treble) and the F-Clef (Bass) in the Grand Staff.

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Instrument Use

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G-Clef (Treble)

Instruments that use the treble clef include violin, flute, oboe, cor anglais, all clarinets, all saxophones, horn, trumpet, cornet, vibraphone, xylophone, mandolin, recorder, bagpipe and guitar. Euphonium and baritone horn are sometimes treated as transposing instruments, using the treble clef and sounding a major ninth lower, and are sometimes treated as concert-pitch instruments, using bass clef. The treble clef is also the upper staff of the grand staff used for harp and keyboard instruments. Most high parts for bass-clef instruments (e.g. cello, double bass, bassoon, and trombone) are written in the tenor clef, but very high pitches may be notated in the treble clef. The viola also may use the treble clef for very high notes. The treble clef is used for the soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, and contralto voices. Tenor voice parts sound an octave lower and are often written using an octave clef (see below) or a double-treble clef.

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F-Clef (Bass)

The Bass clef is used for the cello, double bass and bass guitar, bassoon and contrabassoon, bass recorder, trombone, tuba, and timpani. It is used for baritone horn or euphonium when their parts are written at concert pitch, and sometimes for the lowest notes of the horn. Baritone and bass voices also use bass clef, and the tenor voice is notated in bass clef if the tenor and bass are written on the same staff. Bass clef is the bottom clef in the grand staff for harp and keyboard instruments. Double bass, bass guitar, and contrabassoon sound an octave lower than the written pitch; some scores show an "8" beneath the clef for these instruments to differentiate from instruments that sound at the actual written pitch.

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C-Clef (Alto)

A C-clef on the third line of the staff is called the alto or viola clef. It is currently used for viola, viola d'amore, alto trombone, viola da gamba, and mandola. It is also associated with the countertenor voice and sometimes called the countertenor clef. A vestige of this survives in Sergei Prokofiev's use of the clef for the cor anglais in his symphonies. It occasionally appears in keyboard music (for example, in Brahms's Organ Chorales and John Cage's Dream for piano).

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C-Clef (Tenor)

A C-clef on the fourth line of the staff is called tenor clef. It is used for the viola da gamba (rarely, and mostly in German scores; otherwise the alto clef is used) and for upper ranges of bass-clef instruments such as the bassoon, cello, euphonium, double bass, and tenor trombone. Treble clef may also be used for the upper extremes of these bass-clef instruments. Tenor violin parts were also written in this clef (see e.g. Giovanni Battista Vitali's Op. 11). It was used by the tenor part in vocal music but its use has been largely supplanted either with an octave version of the treble clef or with bass clef when tenor and bass parts are written on a single staff.

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The Grand Staff

The Grand Staff, combining both the treble and bass clefs together is the most common form for notating a piece of music.

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Clef Ranges

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Accidentals

You may have noticed in the preceding clefs that, although there are twelve notes between C and C, only seven are listed. There are notes between some of the notes listed. For example, between C4 and D4 is C#4 which can also be referred to as Db4. This has to do with scales which will be covered in more detail further on, but for the sake of this illustration it should be noted that the notes shown are in the key of C major or its relative, A minor. The key of C major and A minor have no key signature. The notes of those keys consist of all the white keys on the piano keyboard. The black notes are all of C major's and A minor's accidentals.

In music, an accidental is a note of a pitch (or pitch class) that is not a member of the scale or mode indicated by the most recently applied key signature. In musical notation, the flat (^b), natural (♮) and sharp (^#) symbols, among others, mark such notes—and those symbols are also called accidentals.

In the measure (bar) where it appears, an accidental sign raises or lowers the immediately following note, and any repetition of it in the bar, from its normal pitch, overriding the key signature. A note is usually raised or lowered by a semitone, and there are double sharps or flats, which raise or lower the indicated note by two semitones. Accidentals usually apply to all repetitions within the measure in which they appear, unless canceled by another accidental sign, or tied into the following measure. If a note has an accidental and the note is repeated in a different octave within the same measure the accidental is usually repeated, although this convention is far from universal.

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Accidental Symbols

♯	Sharp - Raise the note up one half step.
𝄪	Double Sharp - Raise the note up one whole step.
♭	Flat - Lower the note one half step.
𝄫	Double Flat - Lower the note one whole step.
♮	Natural - Play the note in the key.

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Enharmonic Equivalents

In music, two written notes have enharmonic equivalence if they produce the same pitch but are notated differently.

Enharmonic Equivalents

C Sharp	=	D Flat
D Sharp	=	E Flat
E Sharp	=	F
F Flat	=	E
F Sharp	=	G Flat
G Sharp	=	A Flat
A Sharp	=	B Flat
B Sharp	=	C
C Flat	=	B