Printable staff paper in any layout
Staff paper, also called manuscript paper or blank sheet music, is a page of empty five-line staves for writing music by hand. The generator above draws it in A4 or US Letter with the number of staves, the staff size and the clef you choose, and prints it straight from your browser.
If you only need a standard page, the ready-made PDFs above are vector files that print sharply on any printer. Twelve treble staves on a portrait page is a common general-purpose layout, and the grand-staff version is set up for piano sketches.
Choosing a staff size
Staff size is the height of a staff from its bottom line to its top line. The small, medium and large settings draw staves 6mm, 7mm and 8mm tall.
Smaller staves fit more music on a page and suit quick sketches and short scores. Larger staves leave room for ledger lines, articulations and lyrics, and are easier to write on in pencil on a music stand.
If you ask for more staves than fit at a size, the generator draws fewer rather than squeezing them together, and says so under the preview. A large score works the other way: when a full orchestra will not fit at the chosen size, its staves get slightly smaller so the whole system stays on one page.
Score paper and score order
Score paper gives every instrument its own labelled staff, in the order a conductor and a copyist expect to read it. For an orchestra that order is woodwinds, brass, percussion, harp and keyboards, any voices, then strings, with each section running from high to low. Horns sit above the trumpets even though they usually play lower.
Chamber ensembles keep their own habits. A wind quintet score puts the horn between the clarinet and the bassoon, a brass quintet puts the trumpets first, and a choral score with accompaniment puts the piano below the voices. The presets follow those layouts, with full instrument names on the first system and abbreviations after it.
Sections are joined by brackets, and the harp and piano by braces. When you rule empty bars, the barlines run through each bracketed section so bars line up down the page. Choral barlines stop between the voices to leave room for the words.
Why transposing instruments carry their key
A part for clarinet in B♭ is written a major second above the pitch it sounds, and a part for horn in F a perfect fifth above. Labelling the staff with the instrument's key tells whoever copies the parts which transposition to apply, so a concert-pitch sketch is not handed to a player as it stands.
Decide whether the score itself is in concert pitch or transposed before the first note, and write it at the top of page one. The transposition chart converts concert pitch to written pitch for every instrument on these presets. For the notes each instrument can actually play, see instrument range chart .
Printing tips
- Print at 100% or Actual size. Fit to page shrinks the staves and moves the margins.
- Choose the same paper size in the print dialog as in the generator, and turn off the browser's own headers and footers.
- To keep a file instead of paper, choose Save as PDF as the printer. Most browsers offer it in the print dialog.
- Every page keeps a 13mm margin on each side, which leaves room for the border most printers cannot print on.