Day 1 - Staff, Clefs, and Ledger Lines

Staff: what notes are drawn on; consists of five lines and four spaces. Each line and space represents a note on a keyboard.

Clefs: symbols that say where each note goes. Two kinds of clefs - treble (or G) and bass clef. Treble clef looks like a curved G with a tail, and bass clef looks like a curvy apostrophe and colon.

Treble clef: staff line is known as G, any note on treble clef line is G. Note above G is A (there is no “H” note - musical alphabet goes from A to G). Note above A is B, and so on.

Ledger line: used to extend staff when you run out of room to draw notes - if staff ends on G note, for example, next note is A.

Bass clef: also called F clef. Staff line between two dots is F - next note is G, note after that is A, and so on.

Grand staff: theoretical staff that has eleven lines. If middle line is eliminated, you end up with two regular staffs. Adding treble clef on top staff and bass clef on bottom staff showcases the relationship between the two - they are both joined together by the middle C, an imaginary line corresponding to the missing line on the grand staff.