Pitch, the Staff and Notation Basics

Music theory gives us a shared language for describing what we hear, and notation is the written form of that language. Before you can analyze diverse repertoire or compose your own material for the Diploma course, you need fluency in reading and writing pitch on the staff. This lesson builds that foundation.

The staff, clefs and pitch names

Western staff notation places pitches on a grid of five lines and four spaces. A clef fixes the reference point. The treble clef (G clef) curls around the second line, marking it as the pitch G above middle C; the bass clef (F clef) frames the fourth line as the F below middle C. Instruments and voices are assigned clefs that keep most of their notes on the staff: violins and flutes read treble, cellos and tubas read bass, and the viola commonly uses t