# Staff

Source: https://arcosounds.com/glossary/staff
Also known as: stave

**The staff is the set of five horizontal lines on which music is written; a note’s vertical place on the lines and spaces, read against a clef, gives its pitch.**

Five lines and four spaces give nine positions, extended above and below by ledger lines. The staff has no fixed pitch of its own, the clef at the left assigns one, which is why the same written position is a different note on a treble staff than on a bass or alto staff.

British usage prefers stave, with staves as the plural; American usage says staff and staffs. They are the same thing, and both appear in editions a student will meet.

A brace or bracket joining several staves indicates that they are read together, a piano part, or a section of a full score, and the vertical alignment across them is what makes a score readable at all.

Canonical source: https://arcosounds.com/glossary/staff