You know the music alphabet. But how do you identify a note when you see it?
The answer is by combining a cleff with a staff.
A staff is made of five lines and four spaces.
Music notes go either on a line or in a space, and each line or space is named after one of the seven letters of the alphabet.
Additional notes may be added above or below the staff on ledger lines, and are identified by following the same pattern as the given cleff.
There are two main clefs that appear in most music.
The first is called the treble cleff:
The other is called the bass cleff:
When you place one of these cleffs on a staff then you will know what each line and space is named.
The treble cleff gives the staff lines, from bottom to top, the names E G B D F. You can remember this by the acrostic Every Good Boy Does Fine
And the treble cleff gives the staff spaces, from bottom to top, the names F A C E, which spell the word face.
The treble cleff is also called the G clef because it circles the G line.
The bass cleff gives the staff lines, from bottom to top, the names G B D F A. You can remember this by the acrostic Good Boys Do Fine Always.
And the bass cleff gives the staff spaces, from bottom to top, the names A C E G. You can remember this by the acrostic All Cows Eat Grass.
The bass cleff is also called the F cleff because the two dots surround the F line.
When you put both cleffs together they fit together to form a complete pattern from bottom to top. This is called the grand staff.
The C in between the two staffs is called middle C.
And if you put it all together you can see how the two cleffs work together to lay out just about any note you need to play.
And there’s another acrostic I really like starting from the low E. It goes Every Good Band Deserves Fans And Cash.
You can download a cheat-sheet of everything covered on this page from here: Music Reading 1