BrightKidz Library
Subjects
Notes climbing a five-line staff Five long lines ruled across the picture make a musical staff, with a treble clef curling around the second line at the left-hand end. Six note heads climb steadily from left to right, each with a stem going up from it: the first sits on a line, the next in the space above it, then the line above that, and so on all the way up. The last two are joined at the top by a beam. One more note sits higher still, above the staff altogether, on two short extra lines added just for it, and a bar line closes the end.

Uncover the Mystery of Music Notes

About 4 minutes

A music note tells you two things: which sound to make, and how high or low to make it. Both come from just seven letter names and where the note sits on a five-line staff.

The musical alphabet

Music uses a very short alphabet: just A, B, C, D, E, F and G. After G it does not carry on to H — it goes straight back to A and starts again.

A B C D E F G A B C D E F G

So the alphabet is a loop, not a line. That is why a song can keep climbing higher and higher and still only ever use seven letter names.

The staff

Notes live on a staff: five lines with four spaces between them. Where a note sits on the staff tells you how high or low it sounds. Low notes sit near the bottom, high notes near the top.

Notes can sit on a line, or in a space between two lines. Both count, so five lines actually give you nine places to put a note.

A simple musical staff with notes. A five-line staff with four notes climbing from the bottom line to the top.

Those four notes climb, one line at a time. A musician reading them would play four sounds, each higher than the one before.

Draw your own

Take your paper and rule five lines, evenly spaced. Then draw a few circles — some on lines, some in spaces — and read your own row of notes back as high and low sounds. Hum them if you like.

A tune has just played the note G and is still climbing. Which note name comes next?

Why this matters

Written music is a set of instructions that works even if the person who wrote it is not there. Someone can write a tune down, hand it to a stranger a hundred years later, and hear it played back.

Once you can find the notes on a staff, every piece of sheet music in the world is something you can start to read.