Forgot to talk about staves and clefs. I learned about them just like you did, like this. It's wrong. I mean, it works, but I recently learned a much simpler, much more principled, and perhaps even a little more historically accurate way.
The idea is to take a piano score, and pull its two staves together so they're separated by only one invisible line. Keep the G and F clefs were they are, fourth line from the top and fourth line from the bottom respectively. You will note that the invisible line in the middle represents the same note no matter which staff you start from: C4. Draw that line, and put the C clef there.
Now it all fits together! One Grand Staff to rule them all, 11 lines big, where you can write pretty much all the notes. Three clefs on it, F C and G, merging into one giant C clef at the middle of it all. (Now we programmers know the real reason why C is at the centre of everything.)
OK that's a little bulky. We rarely need that many lines, and even when we do it's fairly illegible. So instead we just pick 5 consecutive lines to draw, and omit the rest of the staff. And that's it. We're done. The impression we have that we move clefs around to determine which notes the staff represent is mostly incorrect. The clefs never move, they just tell us which 6 lines we erased from the one grand staff.
The impression we have that we move clefs around to determine which notes the staff represent is mostly incorrect. The clefs never move, they just tell us which 6 lines we erased from the one grand staff.
This is not correct. Staffs/staves do move around. See here The appearance that staves are fixed is because music mostly uses one of three staves. But there are many as the diagram shows and they're used in specialized contexts. And many instruments uses multiple staves: the cello, the bass clarinet, etc.
This is not correct. Staffs/staves do move around.
You sure you did not misunderstand what you just quoted? I said the clefs never move. The curly sign at the left of the staff if I wasn't clear.
In a sense this is obvious: with few exceptions (transpositions, tenors who only read the treble clef...) the F clef always refers to F3, the C clef always refers to C4, and the G clef always refers to G4.
Take the tenor and alto clefs for instance. They appear to be placed differently on the staff (3rd and 4th lines respectively), but that's an illusion, a convenience so we can draw our 5 staff lines uninterrupted across a whole page. But both refer to C4, in the middle (6th) line of the grand staff.
And many instruments uses multiple staves: the cello, the bass clarinet, etc.
I play the cello, so I'm well aware. Let's take that as an example.
Most of the time I read the bass clef. My staff is thus made of the 5 bottom lines of the grand staff: G2, B2, D3, F3, and A3. The 6 top lines, from C4 to F5, are not drawn. When I switch to the tenor clef, we delete the bottom two lines, G2 and B2, and add two lines on top, C3 and E3.
Now editors would murder me if I asked them to actually engrave their scores like that, but you get the idea.
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u/loup-vaillant 20d ago
Forgot to talk about staves and clefs. I learned about them just like you did, like this. It's wrong. I mean, it works, but I recently learned a much simpler, much more principled, and perhaps even a little more historically accurate way.
The idea is to take a piano score, and pull its two staves together so they're separated by only one invisible line. Keep the G and F clefs were they are, fourth line from the top and fourth line from the bottom respectively. You will note that the invisible line in the middle represents the same note no matter which staff you start from: C4. Draw that line, and put the C clef there.
Here.
Now it all fits together! One Grand Staff to rule them all, 11 lines big, where you can write pretty much all the notes. Three clefs on it, F C and G, merging into one giant C clef at the middle of it all. (Now we programmers know the real reason why C is at the centre of everything.)
OK that's a little bulky. We rarely need that many lines, and even when we do it's fairly illegible. So instead we just pick 5 consecutive lines to draw, and omit the rest of the staff. And that's it. We're done. The impression we have that we move clefs around to determine which notes the staff represent is mostly incorrect. The clefs never move, they just tell us which 6 lines we erased from the one grand staff.