Stave

This is a good starting point for beginners!

Stave is the name for the five parallel, equally-spaced, horizontal lines which hold one or more parts of music:
- An alternative name, still used in some countries, is staff, with staves as the plural (see alternative names for different names used in different countries)
- At the far left of a stave, there should always be a vertical line with either small brackets as on the stave above, or with a brace which spans multiple staves (see example to the right) to group two or more staves together.
- Multiple staves that are held together with a bracket or brace are often just called a "line", but this term can be confusing, so the term "system" is preferred, although this is not in very common usage. For example, if a choir leader or conductor refers to the "second line", it is not necessarily clear whether he/she is referring to the second stave or the second system (counting from the top of the page).
The stave represents two aspects of music at once, but neither is represented absolutely or strictly:
- Time is represented on a stave horizontally:
  - Music on a single stave or system is read starting from the left and moving towards the right.
  - When you reach the right-hand end of the stave or system, you go immediately to the left hand of the stave or system below, just as you do when reading a book.
  - Horizontal distance is not "to scale" or consistent. It cannot be compared exactly between two different pieces of music, or even necessarily between different places in the same piece of music.
    - In one piece of music, two inches/centimetres measured horizontally on the stave might represent 5 seconds, in another piece, two inches/centimetres might represent half a second.
- Frequency or pitch is represented on a stave vertically, and notes are placed on the stave to indicate their note pitch:
  - A high note is placed higher on the stave than a low note.
    - A note is higher than another if it has faster vibrations - see the explanation of frequency or pitch
  - The representation of frequency or pitch on the stave is not absolute: a note at one particular vertical position on one stave might not sound the same pitch as an identically-positioned note on another stave.
  - However, the stave becomes an absolute indicator of frequency or pitch by the placement of a clef at the beginning of each stave. For example:
A note is drawn on a stave either straddling one of the five lines, or within one of the four spaces, for example:
- The "head" of a note (a filled or hollow circle) should be the same size as the gap between two lines.
- Notes can also be positioned on the stave outside the five existing lines, on extensions called ledger-lines, for example: or: or:
The stave can be viewed simply as a "place-holder" so that the vertical position of dots on the page can be correctly viewed. On a single stave, the pitch of each note is indicated by the vertical position of it on the page. This would be difficult to judge without a simple graphical method for judging the relative positions of these notes.

In order to write all the music that is required to sound at once, more than one stave is often needed. This may be because there are many parts, or because the range of the music is too wide to be held on one stave, or both of these may be true.

The following examples give some of the possibilities of multiple staves making up each system.

Here, the brace at the far left brackets together all the staves which form a line or system of music. Two staves like this are usually used for piano music, when the top stave is normally for notes played with the right hand, and the bottom stave is normally for notes played by the left hand.

Organ music requires three staves, two for the hands, as for piano music, and an extra one added at the bottom for notes played on the pedals. A brace is often used on the staves for the hands.

When a four-part choir sings, they often read from four lines of music, with parts for Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass, with the words written underneath each line. Usually, each member of the choir has a full copy, and reads only their own line.

In this example, the tenors sing an octave lower than written (see clef).

Choirs with a different makeup, e.g. a male-voice choir, would have different numbers of staves according to how many parts are being sung, and different clefs according to the different voices.

A four-part choir can also sing from "short-score":
Two

Here, Soprano (S) and Alto (A) share the top stave, and Tenor (T) and Bass (B) share the bottom. For more details, see the details of parts.

For a whole orchestra, the conductor reads from a full score, but each member of the orchestra has a part which only gives their own line.

In a full score, the different instruments are arranged into their families, so that all the strings are bracketed together, all the woodwind, and all the brass.

Then, if there is more than one part for a particular instrument, as in this example for flutes, oboes and trumpets, they may be written on one stave or two.

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