Music staff paper, blank staves ready to print.

Music staff paper is blank sheet music: pages of staves, each a set of horizontal lines, where you write notes by hand. This page makes it for you as a PDF you can print or save. Pick a staff type, say how many staves you want on a page, set the line spacing and the paper size, and download. It makes treble, bass, alto and tenor clef paper, a grand staff for piano, plain staves with no clef, guitar tab, bass tab and a single drum line. The lines are drawn as real vector shapes, so the paper prints sharp at any size, and nothing is uploaded.

How to make music staff paper

1. Press a button under Quick start for a common sheet, or choose a Staff type yourself.
2. Choose the Paper size (Letter, A4, A5 or Legal) and Upright or Across.
3. Set the Line spacing (mm), the distance between two lines. The buttons above it give common sizes.
4. Type the number of staves in the box under it, or press Use the most that fit. The note under the preview says how many fit and how far apart they are.
5. Adjust Margins, Extra left margin, Line weight and Line colour. Choose Bars on each staff if you want ready-made bar lines.
6. Type a Title and Composer if you want them, set Pages in the PDF, then press Download PDF or Print.

Staff size

A five-line staff is four gaps high, so its height is four times the line spacing. The default is 1.75 mm between lines.

Worked example: how many staves fit

Take A4 paper, upright, with the default 12.7 mm margins and 1.75 mm spacing. 1.75 mm is 4.96 points (a point is 1/72 inch), so one staff is 19.84 points high. A treble clef rises above and drops below the staff, so the margin leaves two line gaps of room at the top and the bottom. The usable height is 841.89 minus 72 for the two margins minus 19.84 for that room, which is 750 points. Staves must stay at least five line gaps apart, 24.8 points. The number that fit is 750 plus 24.8, divided by 19.84 plus 24.8, which is 17.4, so 17 staves. Letter paper is shorter and fits 16.

If you ask for fewer, the staves are spread evenly down the page. Twelve staves on A4 sit 16.4 mm apart. If you add a title, page 1 skips any staff that would touch it. A title on its own takes room for one stave on this page, so page 1 has 11 and the others have 12.

Which clef to choose

• Treble clef curls around the second line from the bottom, which is the note G. It is the usual clef for the right hand on piano, violin, flute, guitar music and most singing.
• Bass clef has its two dots around the fourth line from the bottom, the note F. It is used for the left hand on piano, cello, bass and trombone.
• Grand staff joins a treble and a bass staff with a brace, for piano and harp music. The count is for pairs.
• Alto clef centres on the middle line and tenor clef on the fourth line from the bottom. Violas use alto, and cellos and trombones use tenor for high notes.
• Blank staff has no clef, so you can draw the one you need.

Guitar tab and drum lines

Guitar tab has six lines, one for each string, with the highest string on the top line and the lowest at the bottom. You write fret numbers on the lines instead of notes. Bass tab has four lines. The drum option is a single line with a percussion clef, used for rhythms where only the timing matters. For chord names to write above your tab, see the chord finder.

Bars, margins and binding

Bars on each staff draws bar lines at equal distances after the clef, so you can write four bars a line without ruling them. Choose none for free writing. Extra left margin adds 10, 15 or 20 mm on the left of every page for a binder, staples or a hole punch. Title and composer are printed at the top, and page numbers at the bottom if you tick them.

Print it at its true size

The staff is only the size you chose if the page prints at 100 percent. In the print dialog choose Actual size or a scale of 100, not Fit to page. To check, measure one staff with a ruler: at the default spacing it should be 7 mm from the top line to the bottom line. If your printer cannot print to the edge, raise the margins here so everything stays inside the printable area.

One book from several sheets

This page makes one kind of paper per PDF, up to 50 pages. To mix, say treble pages and tab pages, make each PDF and join them with merge PDF. To use a page as a picture in a slide or a document, convert it with PDF to JPG. For a pulse to practise with, try the metronome.