A five-story building
The staff has 5 lines and 4 spaces between them. Think of a building: the higher the note, the higher the sound. The lower it sits, the lower the sound. You read left to right, like text.
Lines and spaces are counted from the bottom up: the 1st line is the bottom one; the 1st space sits between the 1st and 2nd lines.
Tap anywhere on the staff
Tap a line or a space.
The clef is the map legend
The staff alone doesn’t say which note is which. The clef at the start solves that. The treble clef (also called G clef) curls around the 2nd line: that’s where G lives. From there, every step up or down is the next note.
The guitar sounds one octave lower than written. Music is written an octave up just to fit on the staff without a forest of extra lines. Many scores don’t even draw the 8, but the rule still applies. In this course, what you hear is already the real guitar pitch.
Step by step
Notes follow the musical alphabet A B C D E F G and then start over. Each move from a line to the next space (or from a space to the next line) is the next letter.
C major scale going up, tap the notes
Notice: the low C sits on a ledger line, a short line that extends the staff downward. Very low or very high notes use these extra lines, like a basement and a rooftop.
Note on a line: the line cuts right through the middle of the notehead. Note in a space: the notehead sits snugly between two lines, with nothing crossing it.
Quick check
Get every answer right to finish. Mistakes are part of it: read the explanation and try again.
1. In treble clef, which line does the curl wrap around?
2. From a line to the space just above it, the note...
3. The 8 under the treble clef means...