LINES AND OCTAVE SIGNS IN SHEET MUSIC

LINES:

There are some lines in sheet music, which helps us to understand some stuffs written in it. Many of them are commonly used in various musical pieces. The ultimate aim in learning sheet music is to read the musical notations and to play the music in a clear manner. Let us see the list of lines that can be used in a sheet music.

Stave or Staff:

These are the commonly used five lines, which are used to indicate the musical pitches. Since the musical notes are from A to G, the top most line represents the highest pitch and vice versa. These notes moves vertically upward to reach highest note. In a stave, both the lines and spaces holds values. They together used to represent the musical notes. A clef will be used in each stave to determine specific value for each line and spaces in a stave.

Staff/Stave

Ledger or Leger lines:

Apart from the five common lines in a stave, there may be some additional lines added above or below the staff. These are used to represent higher or lower notes which a stave cannot cover. There shall be up-to 5 ledger lines which can be added in a sheet music and there are some other symbols such as 8va/15va to represent the notes which are beyond those limits.

Ledger/Leger Lines

Bar Lines:

These are vertical lines, which are used to split each bars based on the time signature. When there comes any grand staff (Combining the staves of multiple instruments), these bar lines will extend to those staves as well to indicate the separation of each bars clearly.

Bar lines

Double Bar Lines:

The double bar lines are used to indicate any sudden changes in the stave. Such as change in time signature, key signature or a new musical section in the same piece.

Double Bar Lines

Bold Double Bar Lines:

In Bold double bar lines, there will be one normal vertical line and another bold bar line. It is used to represent the end of a musical piece or any composition.

Bold Double Bar Lines

Dotted Bar Lines:

This type of bar lines can be used to reduce the complexity in count and time signature, when some uncommon time signature comes. Such as 5/4, 7/4, etc.,

Dotted Bar Lines

Brackets:

These are used to combine two or more instruments to play simultaneously. Sometimes this is used to represent different parts of same instruments, such as left and right hand notation of a piano.

Bracket

Braces:

This is somewhat similar to the brackets. They are most commonly used in representing piano notation, harp notation or grand staff. Thebrace is some times called as "Accolade" in some old contexts.

Brace

These are the most commonly used sheet music lines. 

OCTAVE SIGNS:

In instruments such as grand piano, there will be 7 octaves. In such case, it is impossible to represent all the octaves in a same stave by extending the ledger lines too high and too low. At that time some kind of values are used to denote the octave values. They are,

• Ottava alta. (8va)
• Quindicesima. (15ma)

Ottava Alta:

It is denoted using the symbol 8va which is used to shift one octave upper (if placed on top of the stave) or lower (if placed on the bottom of the stave). Following image will give a clear about ottava.

Ottava

Quindicesima:

Quindicesima is used to denote the change of pitches of the range of two octaves. It is represented as 15ma.

Quindicesima