Treble clef lines and spaces

The treble clef curls around the second line from the bottom, and that line is G above middle C.

Five lines, four spaces

Written music places pitch on a staff: five evenly spaced horizontal lines with four spaces between them. We always count from the bottom, so the lowest line is the first line and the top line is the fifth. A note can sit on a line, with the line running through its middle, or in a space, touching the lines above and below. Higher on the page means higher in sound, and time runs from left to right, like a line of text.

The lines and spaces have no names until a clef appears at the start of the staff. The treble clef is used for higher voices and instruments: soprano singers, flute, violin, trumpet, and the right hand of most piano music. Its lower curl wraps around the second line from the bottom and fixes that line as G4, the G just above middle C. That is why it is also called the G clef.

The line notes and the space notes

Reading upward, the lines are E G B D F and the spaces are F A C E. Because each step on the staff moves to the next letter, lines and spaces simply take turns: E on the first line, F in the first space, G on the second line, A in the second space, and so on up to F on the top line. The letters run A B C D E F G and then start again at A.

Mnemonics are memory aids

Teachers often hand out a sentence for the lines, such as "Every Good Boy Does Fine", or the version used in Open Music Theory, "Every Good Bird Does Fly". The spaces spell the word FACE. These sentences are mnemonics: memory aids that help you get started. They are not rules of music, and they become slow if you recite the whole sentence every time you meet a note on the fourth line.

A faster habit is to learn a few landmark notes by sight and read the rest as steps from them. The G line is marked by the clef itself. The middle line is B, the top line is F, and the space just below the top line is E. From any landmark, a note one position higher is the next letter, and a note one position lower is the previous letter. After a few weeks of practice, most players stop thinking of the sentence at all.