Music pitch notation

Pitches on the treble and bass staves:

Music is most commonly notated using the Staff. The staff consist of five horizontal lines on which musical notes lie. The lines and the spaces between the lines represent different pitches.
Each line of the staff represents a pitch. In music the pitch of a note means how high or low a note is. The pitch of a note can be measured in a unit called Hertz.
For example a note that is vibrating at 256 Hz will be caused by sounds waves that vibrate at 256 times a second.
This will be Middle C on the piano.
With the blank staff we can't tell what notes to play. We use Clefs to tell us which notes correspond to which lines or spaces. The most common clefs are the Treble Clef ( also known as the G Clef) and the Bass Clef ( or F Clef ).

The Treble Clef spirals around the second line from the bottom. This spiral tells us that notes on this line are G.

From here we can figure out the other names simply by going forward or backward through the musical alphabet: A,B,C,D,E,F,G.


Note: Pitches can also be given the name of Do,Re,Mi,Fa,Sol,La and Ti.
After "G", the alphabet starts over again with the letter A.
Since the treble clef staff is always stacked on top of the bass clef staff, you know that pitches on the treble staff are higher than pitches on the bass staff.

An easy way to remember the pitches on a staff is to memorize the lines and spaces. On the treble staff, the names of the spaces spell the word FACE. It's easy to remember the treble staff lines if you memorize a saying. The first letter of each word in the saying is the pitch name of a line--Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.

If we need more notes above or below the staff we add Ledger Lines, which extend the range of the staff. (Middle C is the first ledger line below the staff in Treble Clef.)

The Bass Clef has two dots, above and below the second line from the top. The dots tell us that this line is F.

The note names in Bass Clef are:

Middle C is the first ledger line above the staff in Bass Clef.

There is an easy way to memorize all the lines and spaces on the bass staff. In the diagram below, you will find the two sayings that will help you remember the names of the spaces and the lines.

As I mention before there are two other Clefs.

Their names are: Alto and Tenor.

The Alto and Tenor Clefs have two curves that meet in the center. The line on the staff where these curves meet is the note C. These clefs are also called C Clefs for this reason.

The Alto Clef is positioned on the middle line. This line becomes the note C. (This note is also Middle C.) 

The note names in Alto Clef are:

Tenor Clef is very similar to Alto Clef but the main difference is that the Tenor Clef is positioned on the second line from the top whereas Alto Clef is positioned on the middle line. In Tenor Clef the second line from the top becomes the note C. (This is also Middle C, just like in Alto Clef.) The note names in Tenor Clef are: