The stave

LIVE MUSIC 1: The stave

We write music on a stave. A stave consists of five lines and four spaces. We count lines from the bottom up. Line number 3 is called middle line.

Time signature. It indicates how many beats are between bar lines. The bottom number indicates the note value that represents one beat (it is usually a power of two). The top number indicates how many such beats constitute a bar.

A note may be the musical sound and the symbol denoting that musical sound. The notes are: A, B, C, D, E, F, G. When the G-signature is used, the notes are placed in the stave as in the image. Then listen to them.

These are the symbols that represent the length of musical sounds. There is a rest for each particular note value. Rests show measured segments of silence in a piece of music.

Notes names and rests

A clef is a symbol which assigns a particular pitch to one of the five lines and, consequently, the remaining lines and spaces acquire a value too. The most common clef is treble clef (also called G-clef because G is the note on the second line, where the clef starts to be drawn).

A bar is a segment of time corresponding to a specific number of beats and the limits of the bars are indicated by vertical bar lines. There are some types of bar lines.

These are the parts of a note. The texture or shape of the note head and the presence or not of stems or flags indicate the duration of a note. If a note is below the middle line, the stem will go up and it is drawn on the right of the note head. If a note is above the middle line, the stem will go down and it will be drawn on the left side of the head note. If the notes are on the middle line, the stem may go up or down.