In Western musical notation , the staff ( UK also stave ; plural : staffs or staves ), also occasionally referred to as a pentagram , is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that each represent a different musical pitch or in the case of a percussion staff , different percussion instruments. Appropriate music symbols, depending on the intended effect, are placed on the staff according to their corresponding pitch or function. Musical notes are placed by pitch, percussion notes are placed by instrument, and rests and other symbols are placed by convention.
20-535: [REDACTED] Look up stave or staves in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Stave may refer to: Music [ edit ] Stave (music) , used in musical notation Stanza The Staves , an English folk rock trio People [ edit ] Bruce M. Stave (1937–2017), American historian Joel Stave (born 1992), American football quarterback Places [ edit ] Stave (Krupanj) ,
40-406: A brace is used for this purpose. When more than one system appears on a page, often two parallel diagonal strokes are placed on the left side of the score to separate them. Four-part SATB vocal settings, especially in hymnals , use a divisi notation on a two-staff system with soprano and alto voices sharing the upper staff and tenor and bass voices on the lower staff. Confusingly,
60-445: A center alto as this creates confusion). When playing the piano or harp, the upper staff is normally played with the right hand and the lower staff with the left hand. In music intended for organ with pedalboard , a grand staff normally comprises three staves, one for each hand on the manuals and one for the feet on the pedalboard. Early Western medieval notation was written with neumes , which did not specify exact pitches but only
80-444: A clef, the notes represented by the positions on the staff can be modified by the key signature or accidentals on individual notes. A clefless staff may be used to represent a set of percussion sounds; each line typically represents a different instrument. A vertical line drawn to the left of multiple staves creates a system , indicating that the music on all the staves is to be played simultaneously. A brace (curly bracket)
100-486: 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
120-672: A village in Serbia Stave Hill , in London Stave Lake , in British Columbia, Canada Stave River , in British Columbia, Canada Stave Run , a river in Virginia, United States Other uses [ edit ] Stave (wood) , a length of wood used to form the sides of barrels, tanks, tubs, etc. Stave bearing Stave church , a type of Medieval wooden church Icelandic magical staves Stave (game) , played by
140-442: A village in Serbia Stave Hill , in London Stave Lake , in British Columbia, Canada Stave River , in British Columbia, Canada Stave Run , a river in Virginia, United States Other uses [ edit ] Stave (wood) , a length of wood used to form the sides of barrels, tanks, tubs, etc. Stave bearing Stave church , a type of Medieval wooden church Icelandic magical staves Stave (game) , played by
160-464: Is created. Typically, the upper staff uses a treble clef and the lower staff has a bass clef . In this instance, middle C is centered between the two staffs, and it can be written on the first ledger line below the upper staff or the first ledger line above the lower staff. Very rarely, a centered line with a small C clef is written, and usually used to indicate that B, C, or D on the line can be played with either hand (ledger lines are not used from
180-598: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages stave [REDACTED] Look up stave or staves in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Stave may refer to: Music [ edit ] Stave (music) , used in musical notation Stanza The Staves , an English folk rock trio People [ edit ] Bruce M. Stave (1937–2017), American historian Joel Stave (born 1992), American football quarterback Places [ edit ] Stave (Krupanj) ,
200-410: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Stave (music) The absolute pitch of each line of a non-percussive 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
220-434: Is used to join multiple staves that represent an instrument, such as a piano, organ, harp, or marimba. A bracket is an additional vertical line joining staves to show groupings of instruments that function as a unit, such as the string section of an orchestra. Sometimes a second bracket is used to show instruments grouped in pairs, such as the first and second oboes or first and second violins in an orchestra. In some cases,
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#1732836940407240-705: The Ohlone people Stave Puzzles , an American jigsaw puzzle company See also [ edit ] Staff (disambiguation) Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Stave . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stave&oldid=1249130974 " Categories : Disambiguation pages Place name disambiguation pages Disambiguation pages with surname-holder lists Hidden categories: Short description
260-657: The Ohlone people Stave Puzzles , an American jigsaw puzzle company See also [ edit ] Staff (disambiguation) Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Stave . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stave&oldid=1249130974 " Categories : Disambiguation pages Place name disambiguation pages Disambiguation pages with surname-holder lists Hidden categories: Short description
280-456: 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
300-708: The German System (often in the combined forms Liniensystem or Notensystem ) may refer to a single staff as well as to the Akkolade (from the French) or system in the English sense; the Italian term is accollatura . When music on two staves is joined by a brace , or is intended to be played at once by a single performer (usually a keyboard instrument or harp ), a grand staff ( American English ) or great stave ( British English )
320-404: The notehead on the staff indicates which note to play: higher-pitched notes are marked higher on the staff. The notehead can be placed with its center intersecting a line ( on a line ) or in between the lines touching the lines above and below ( in a space ). Notes outside the range of the staff are placed on or between ledger lines —lines the width of the note they need to hold—added above or below
340-457: The shape of the melodies, i.e. indicating when the musical line went up or down; presumably these were intended as mnemonics for melodies which had been taught by rote. During the 9th through 11th centuries a number of systems were developed to specify pitch more precisely, including diastematic neumes whose height on the page corresponded with their absolute pitch level (Longobardian and Beneventan manuscripts from Italy show this technique around
360-552: The staff into measures . Staff is more common than stave in both American English and British English , with the latter being, in fact, a back-formation from the plural staves . The plural staffs also exists for staff in both American and British English, alongside the traditional plural staves . In addition to the pronunciations expected from the spellings, both plural forms are also pronounced / s t æ v z / in American English. The vertical position of
380-418: The staff. Which staff positions represent which notes is determined by a clef placed at the beginning of the staff. The clef identifies a particular line as a specific note, and all other notes are determined relative to that line. For example, the treble clef puts the G above middle C on the second line. The interval between adjacent staff positions is one step in the diatonic scale . Once fixed by
400-409: The year 1000). Digraphic notation, using letter names similar to modern note names in conjunction with the neumes, made a brief appearance in a few manuscripts, but a number of manuscripts used one or more horizontal lines to indicate particular pitches. The treatise Musica enchiriadis ( c. 900 ) uses Daseian notation for indicating specific pitches, but the modern use of staff lines
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