Western musical notation privileges two musical features: pitch and rhythm. Pitches are notated vertically (on the y-axis), while rhythms are notated horizontally (on the x-axis). Western musical notation is read left-to-right and top-to-bottom, like the page of a book in written English.

Notation of Notes

A note indicates both pitch and rhythm. Each written note consists of a notehead (either empty or filled in) and may also have a stem and a beam or flag (see Rhythmic and Rest Values). Example 1 shows an illustration of noteheads, stems, beams, and flags:

Staff Notation

A staff (plural “staves”) is essential for conveying pitch. A staff consists of five horizontal lines, evenly spaced, and each note is placed on the line or space that corresponds to its pitch (see Clefs below). Example 2 depicts a staff:

Placing Notes on a Staff

Noteheads on a line should fill in half of each space above and below. Noteheads in a space should just touch the lines above and below. Example 3 shows examples of correct noteheads, both open and filled in, both on lines and in spaces:

Noteheads should be oval (not round), and they are tilted slightly upward toward the right. Example 4 shows incorrect noteheads. As you can see, noteheads can be drawn too small, too big, or the wrong shape.

Stems and Beams

The stems of notes can point either upward (on the right side of a note) or downward (on the left side of a note). For notes above the middle line, the stem points downward, and for notes below the middle line, stems point upward. Notes on the middle line can point in either direction, depending on the surrounding notes. This is shown in Example 5:

Stemming directions and beaming conventions are discussed more in Simple Meter and Time Signatures and Compound Meter and Time Signatures. When hand-drawing stems, their length is equal to four lines of the staff. Beams are about four times thicker than stems.

Drawing Seconds

When notes at the interval of a second (see the Generic Intervals section of The Keyboard and the Grand Staff) occur harmonically, they are on an adjacent line and space of the staff, so one note needs to be displaced to the left or right of the stem. The lower note always goes on the left, regardless of whether the stem points up or down. Example 6 shows the correct way to draw seconds:

Seconds should not be stacked on top of one another, nor should the lower note be on the right, as seen in Example 7:

Drawing seconds in seventh chords is discussed in Seventh Chords.

Clefs

The notes drawn on the lines and spaces of a staff represent pitches. Musicians use spatial metaphors to describe notes placed on a staff: notes appearing toward the top of the staff are said to be “higher” than those toward the bottom, which are said to be “lower.” Higher pitches are produced by sound waves with a shorter wavelength (and consequently a higher frequency); sound waves with a longer wavelength (lower frequency) produce lower pitches. Such spatial metaphors vary with milieu—i.e. across cultures and time periods. For example, for some music theorists in ancient Greece, higher-sounding notes were visually placed below lower-sounding notes.^[1] As Example 8 demonstrates, this is because these theorists were likely most familiar with string instruments that functioned similarly to the violins, guitars, and harps we know today.

Example 8. Dr. Jacob Tews (Christopher Newport University) explains more about ancient Greek musical notation.

For notes to convey pitch information beyond “higher” and “lower,” the staff on which they appear must include a clef. A clef indicates which pitches are assigned to the lines and spaces on a staff (see also Reading Clefs). The two most commonly used clefs today are the treble clef and bass clef. Two other clefs that you may encounter are the alto clef and the tenor clef. Example 9 shows the same pitch placed after the treble, bass, alto, and tenor clefs:

Higher notes, such as those played by a flute or sung by a soprano, are usually written in treble clef, and lower notes, such as those played by a trombone or sung by a bass, are usually written in bass clef. Alto and tenor clefs are relatively rare compared to treble and bass. But in some cases, alto clef is used for medium-high notes, and tenor clef is used for medium-low notes.

Drawing Clefs

One can draw a treble clef in three simple steps, as demonstrated in Example 10:

1. Draw a slanted vertical line that extends slightly above and below the staff.
2. Draw a half circle that intersects with your slanted line at the second staff line from the top.
3. Circle around the second staff line from the bottom.

Likewise, one can also draw a bass clef in three steps, as shown in Example 11:

1. Draw a dot on the second staff line from the top.
2. Draw a backward C that ends in the bottom space of the staff, making sure that the top part of the C does not extend above the staff.
3. Place two dots to the right of the backward C, in the top two spaces of the staff.

One can draw an alto clef in four steps, as Example 12 shows:

1. Draw a thick vertical line that spans the staff.
2. Draw a thinner vertical line next to it.
3. Draw two backward Cs, the first taking up slightly less than the top half of the staff and the second taking up slightly less than the bottom half of the staff.
4. Connect these backward Cs with a point that rests on the middle line of the staff.

As seen in Example 13, the tenor clef is drawn the same way as the alto clef, just shifted up one line of the staff higher. The vertical lines in steps 1 and 2 begin on the second staff line from the bottom and extend slightly above the staff. The first backward C extends slightly above the top half of the staff, and the second takes up slightly less than the middle two spaces of the staff. The point connecting them rests on the second staff line from the top.

Sometimes when musicians draw the alto or tenor clef, they do so by writing the letter “K” as a form of shorthand. Example 14 shows this:

Writing Ledger Lines

When notes are too high or low to be written on a staff, small lines called ledger lines are drawn to extend the staff. Example 15 shows ledger lines written above and below a staff:

Example 16 shows notes (with stems and beams) drawn on ledger lines, above and below a staff.

When writing ledger lines, be sure not to put in an extra ledger line above or below the note you are writing. Example 17 first shows the correct way of writing notes on ledger lines, followed by the incorrect way, with extra ledger lines above and below the notes:

• Pitch and Frequency (the Physics of Sound) (physicsclassroom.com)
• The Music Staff (essential-music-theory.com)
• Drawing Notes (YouTube)
• Clefs (Music Notes Now)
• Drawing Treble and Bass Clefs (YouTube)
• Drawing C Clefs (Ultimate Music Theory)
• The Staff, Clefs, and Ledger Lines (musictheory.net)
• Music Notation Style Guide (Indiana University)

1. Writing Noteheads, Clefs, and Ledger Lines (.pdf, .docx)