Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange
Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [clefs]

A clef (from French: clef “key”) is a musical symbol used to indicate the set of pitches of written notes.

One of a group of standard symbols placed on a staff of music to indicates the range of pitches covered by that staff by identifying a standard base pitch. Examples are the treble clef (G-clef), the bass clef (F-clef), and the Middle-C clef, all of which have their own symbol.

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Is there a Relative Pitch Clef?

To start out: I am more-or-less familiar with all the standard musical clef notations, including F, C, and G clefs; as well as the fact that clefs can be movable (tenor clef, french violin clef...) and have octave displacements (8va/8vb). I'm also…
Caleb Hines
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Why are clefs associated with reference notes G, F and C?

Why don't we see, for example, a clef with a stylised symbol representing an A, B, D or an E? What's so special about G, F and C? Who decided to use them and why?
Apollo
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Why are double staff pieces of music not properly aligned for Middle C?

I am a guitar, flute and (a long time ago) bassoon player. I can play a few things on a keyboard, badly, in short: I know how it all works. I'm trying to help teach my wife to play a harp. It has a range from C3 to C6, so when making arrangements…
Mark Ormston
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Is there a legitimate reason why a C-Clef could ever be used in piano music?

I'm working on a composition that I can't help but to use the C-Clef because it renders neater on paper. This one switched to treble clef twice. But this would be a mess with bass clef and treble clef switching much too often, and I'd still end up…
Mickael Caruso
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Why is the bass clef indicated twice on the same line in this Bartok piece?

Here's an excerpt from the piece Chromatic Invention from Bartok's Mikrokosmos, volume 3, page 39. I don't get why at the end of the lower line the bass clef indication is repeated. Is this "for security" like it's sometimes done with accidentals?…
user10960
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How can I learn to read bass clef score more naturally?

I hadn't read music for about 20 years, after doing a little classical guitar as a young child, and recently started learning piano. I was pleasantly surprised to find that reading music on the treble clef came back very quickly and feels very…
Mr. Boy
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Where was the D clef used?

I recently came across this score by Henry Work called "Grandfather's Clock". And i was a bit confused at first regarding this clef in the chorus. It seems to be a D clef. I was wondering if this clef was popular at the time, or was used for any…
garyF
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Bass clef in piano scores, why?

I am a drummer, I do not play any melodic instrument, though I happen to read some piano scores, and I am wondering what was the idea behind using the bass clef for the left hand part. From what I understand, if the left hand part of a piano score…
user23227
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Identifying bass notes on piano with strange clef

I'm not musician, I'm old man and I would like to hear again some specific music. I have the sheet music and I bought a piano. I was reading this Wikipedia article and would like to identify the notes on the piano: The above clef is 'Treble', and…
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When did keyboard partitions start to use the G-clef for the upper staff ?

When you look at very old sheetmusic (for harpsichord or organ), you see that the upper staff has a C-clef, first line. The lower one is the familiar bass F-clef, fourth line. Why and when did the habits change? Can you still find sheetmusic printed…
Eric
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Which instrument (generally) has to read the largest number of clefs?

I recently had a (light-hearted) argument with a violin-playing friend, I play the trombone and we were discussing which instrument is more difficult to play. We talked about the relative difficulty of orchestral parts and made the obligatory…
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What is the Schäffer Clef?

I was perusing the Musescore master palette and came across this triangle shaped clef called the Schäffer clef. Doing a Google search for it only returned stuff like a website for browsing the Standard Music Font Layout and other websites about…
awe lotta
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Clef between a beam? proper notation?

Is that F Clef between the beam of those two notes in the 3rd bar proper notation? if so, what does it mean? I'm guessing it's the same as the G Clef that precedes it, so that the next note would be C instead of an A, am I right? This question is…
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Why are there transposing instruments that transpose by octave?

Some instruments (for example the guitar, the bass guitar, and the xylophone) have written music in a typical clef, however the note written and the note played are an octave lower or higher depending on the instrument. There are octave clefs that…
Dom
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Horn clefs across two staves

I am not a horn player, but I do have a bit of knowledge about them. Horn parts can be written in the G or F clefs, right? Is it common practice to put the first horn stave (horns 1 and 3) in the G clef and the second stave (2 and 4) in the F clef…
American Luke
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