Staff lines
The staff lines form the grid on which pitches are shown spatially. The higher a note sits on the staff, the higher it sounds. Five lines and the four spaces give nine steps. With ledger lines the grid can be continued upwards and downwards.
- Lines
- five, counted from bottom to top
- Spaces
- four
- Steps on the staff
- nine
- Extension
- ledger lines above and below the staff
- Which note where
- decided by the clef
Five lines, nine places
Counting always goes from bottom to top: the lowest line is the first. Lines and spaces alternate and denote successive natural notes. A note on a line and the next in the space above lie a second apart. Which note lies on which line is told only by the clef: without it the staff denotes only distances, not heights.
Treble clef: the five lines
From bottom to top the lines carry E, G, B, D, F. Each note sits exactly on a line. From line to line it is a third.
Treble clef: the four spaces
In the spaces lie F, A, C, E. The notes F-A-C-E spell the word “FACE” and are a well-known memory aid.
Ledger lines: the grid continued downwards and upwards
Middle C (C4) sits on the first ledger line below the staff, the D lies in the space above it, directly under the bottom line. Upwards the grid continues: the A sits on the first ledger line above the staff, the B in the space above.
Bass clef: the same five lines, different notes
In the bass clef the lines carry G, B, D, F, A. The same staff, but the clef fixes the pitches differently.
In the glossary: Clef · Ledger line · Octave
Why lines?
The development of the staff was the decisive step from a memory aid to real musical notation. As long as neumes stood freely above the text, only the direction of movement could be read. With a fixed reference line the intervals became unambiguous, and for the first time an unknown melody could be sung from the writing alone. The restriction to five lines is a compromise between range and legibility: more lines would offer more room but could no longer be counted at a glance. The five-line staff caught on in vocal music in the course of the late Middle Ages; the dating varies according to the source between the 13th and the 15th century. In keyboard music other systems stayed in use for longer in some places.
Other systems
Besides the usual five-line staff there is the four-line one of square notation for liturgical chant, a one-line one for percussion without definite pitch and multi-line special forms such as in guitar tablature.
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Related terms
ClefTreble clefBass clefLedger lineOctaveThird
Editor: Maik Krohm · reviewed on 3 October 2026
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