So… what do all the lines and spaces actually mean?
A musical staff is made up of five lines. Notes can sit on a line or in a space between the lines.
In the treble clef:
- the lines are (from bottom to top) E, G, B, D, F
- the spaces are F, A, C, E.
An easy way to remember the names of the lines is a mnemonic. From bottom to top we can say:
Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit
or…
Elephants Got Big Dirty Feet
Pick your favourite or make up your own!
The spaces are perhaps a little easier. SPACE rhymes with FACE!
Notes can appear above and below the staff as well. We can easily work out what these are from our musical alphabet. Each time you enter a new line or a new space it’s one step in the alphabet.
- The space below the ‘E’ line will be ‘D’
- The space above the ‘F’ line will be ‘G’.
Umm… which D is which?
You may notice that I’ve written “low” and “high” on the notes above. The musical alphabet only has seven letters, and because they go around in a circle they will repeat.
Every time we get to a new loop in the circle, this is called an “octave” (“oct”, like “octopus” – 8 notes).
One octave (8 notes) from A would be :
A B C D E F G A
One octave (8 notes) from D would be
D E F G A B C D
This is what we mean when we play a “one-octave scale”.
Remember that the higher up the staff we climb, the higher the notes get. At the beginning, we are working in one octave D major (D and A string) so the lowest note you will see will be open D (below the staff) and the highest will be D on the A string (third finger).
Challenge
Step 1: See if you can work out the rhythm and the note names for this piece of music.
Step 2: Clap the rhythm
Step 3: Can you work out what the name of the tune is?
