Music notation: staff, clefs, note values and time signatures

A thousand years ago musicians could learn a new song only by ear, and it took years. In the 11th century the Italian monk Guido of Arezzo improved the way of writing notes on lines and named the pitches after syllables of a Latin hymn: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. Later ut was replaced by “do” and “si” was added. That is how the music notation read all over the world today came about.

The staff and clefs

Notes are written on the staff — five parallel lines and the four spaces between them. Lines are counted from the bottom up. The higher a note sits, the higher it sounds. Notes that don't fit are written on short ledger lines. The clef at the start of the staff fixes the note names: the treble clef (G clef) curls around the second line and marks the G above middle C there, while the bass clef (F clef) marks with its two dots the F below middle C on the fourth line.

Note and rest values

Every note has a rest of the same length — a sign for silence: whole rest, half rest, quarter rest and so on. A dot after a note adds half of its value: a dotted half note = 2 + 1 = 3 beats. A curved line joining two notes of the same pitch — a tie — adds their values together.

Time signatures and bars

Music is divided into equal parts — bars (measures) — separated by bar lines. The time signature at the start is written as two numbers: the top number says how many beats are in a bar, the bottom number which note counts as one beat (4 — a quarter note, 8 — an eighth note). In 4/4 every bar has four quarter-note beats; this time is sometimes marked with the letter C.