Basic Music Theory: How to Read, Write, and Understand Written Music

6: Going Over the Clef

What’s a Clef?

A clef is a symbol used at the beginning of a musical staff to tell the

reader which letter name goes with which line or space. The word clef

didn’t show up until around the middle 1500s. Clef is a French word that

means key, as in, “Hey man, what key are we in?”

In early music, a letter was written at the beginning of the text of a

plainchant (remember monophonic music on page 19?). The letter told

the singer which note to start on.

Around 1000 AD some bright soul thought to draw a line from the letter

all the way across the page. Then Guido di Arezzo added more lines and

we had our staff. Over time, composers made that beginning letter more

and more fancy until it no longer looked like a letter at all. That was

probably when somebody in France in the middle of the 1500s decided to

call them clefs.

There are several different kinds of clefs: C clefs, treble clef, bass clef,

and rhythm clef (also called the percussion clef). We’ll only be learning

the three most common ones: treble clef, bass clef, and the rhythm clef.

Example 6.1 The Clefs.

Each clef has something which shows the letter name of one line.

Because you now know how letter names are used in music (A through

G, right?), you can figure out what all the other letters are for that staff

once you know the name of one line. I’ll show you how when we look at

each clef in its own chapter.

C Clef Treble Clef

Bass Clef Rhythm Clef