Family 11 · staff
Printable staff paper and blank sheet music
Staff paper is blank sheet music: rows of five-line staves for writing music by hand. Pick treble, bass or grand staff, guitar or bass TAB, or a staff paired with TAB; choose the staff height and how many staves go on the page; then download a vector PDF for Letter or A4 that prints every line at its true size — a 7 mm staff measures 7 mm.
Quick pick
Staff / sheet music — ready to print
One click to PDF. No signup, no watermark, exact dimensions.
Make your own staff paper
Every choice redraws the sheet below with the same engine as the presets.
- 12 staves per page (treble staff)
- Staff height 7.0 mm (rastral 3), lines 1.75 mm apart
- 14.2 mm of clear space between staves
Calculation audit
- Page: Letter — 612.00 × 792.00 pt
- Layout: Treble staff
- Staff height: 7.00 mm (rastral 3), staff space 1.750 mm
- Systems drawn: 12
- System pitch: 21.17 mm, clear gap 14.17 mm
- Formula: staff-v1
What staff size should I print?
Engravers measure a staff from its bottom line to its top line and name the standard heights by rastral number, after the five-nibbed pen once used to rule them: rastral 0 is the largest and 8 the smallest. Rastral 3, 7.0 mm, is the usual size for instrumental parts and piano music, and it is the default here. Beginners and young students write more easily on bigger staves, so the builder also offers a 12 mm staff; small sizes let a full score fit more staves on a page.
| Rastral | Staff height | Inches | Line spacing | Max per Letter page | Max per A4 page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 9.2 mm | 0.362″ | 2.300 mm | 13 | 14 |
| 1 | 7.9 mm | 0.311″ | 1.975 mm | 16 | 17 |
| 2 | 7.4 mm | 0.291″ | 1.850 mm | 17 | 18 |
| 3 | 7.0 mm | 0.276″ | 1.750 mm | 18 | 19 |
| 4 | 6.5 mm | 0.256″ | 1.625 mm | 19 | 20 |
| 5 | 6.0 mm | 0.236″ | 1.500 mm | 21 | 22 |
| 6 | 5.5 mm | 0.217″ | 1.375 mm | 23 | 24 |
| 7 | 4.8 mm | 0.189″ | 1.200 mm | 26 | 28 |
| 8 | 3.7 mm | 0.146″ | 0.925 mm | 34 | 36 |
Heights: Elaine Gould, Behind Bars (rastral 0) and the traditional engravers’ table (1–8). Maximums are the generator’s own figures for treble staves with half-inch margins and at least one staff height of clear space between staves.
Treble, bass or grand staff?
Choose the clef your instrument or voice reads. Treble clef suits flute, violin, trumpet, guitar, higher voices and the piano’s right hand; bass clef suits cello, bassoon, trombone, bass guitar, lower voices and the left hand. A grand staff joins a treble and a bass staff with a brace and a line at the left, the layout used for piano, organ and harp. The two staves sit six line-spaces apart, room for middle C on its ledger line between them.
The clefs are drawn as vector outlines from the open-licence Bravura music font, placed exactly where engraving software puts them: the treble clef’s curl around the G line, the bass clef’s dots around the F line. Choose “No clef” for theory exercises where students draw their own.
Do you have blank guitar tab paper?
Yes: six-line guitar TAB, four-line bass TAB, and a treble staff joined to a six-line TAB staff for writing rhythm and fingering together. Tablature lines are spaced one and a half times as far apart as staff lines, so fret numbers have room — at the 9.2 mm size the TAB lines are 3.45 mm apart. Turn on bar lines to pre-rule 2 to 6 bars per line for riffs, chord charts and lead sheets.
How do I print staff paper at the correct size?
Print at 100% scale — never “Fit to page”, which shrinks every staff — and match the paper size in the print dialog to the sheet in the tray. Then check one staff with a ruler: a rastral 3 staff measures 7.0 mm from the bottom line to the top line. If it doesn’t, the calibration page works out a correction for your printer from one measurement.
For a manuscript book, add the sheet to a multi-page pack and repeat it as many times as you need, or open it in the Studio to set any staff height from 3 to 20 mm, a title line, or a binding gutter.
Related paper types
For lyrics and lesson notes, print printable lined paper; for music theory classes, a Cornell notes template keeps terms and questions beside the notes. How the staves are spaced is documented on the methodology page.
Frequently asked questions
What is staff paper?
Staff paper is blank sheet music: paper printed with staves, the sets of five evenly spaced horizontal lines that musical notes are written on. It is also called manuscript paper or music paper. Notes sit on the lines and in the four spaces between them, and short ledger lines extend the staff above or below, which is why staff paper leaves a clear gap between staves.
How many staves should a page of staff paper have?
It depends on the staff size. Twelve 7 mm staves fill a Letter page with about 14 mm of clear space between them, which leaves room for ledger lines and lyrics. Larger staves for young students fit eight to ten per page; small staves for ensemble scores fit more. The builder above lets you choose 4 to 14 per page or as many as fit, and it never squeezes the gap below one staff height — if a count doesn't fit, it says so and draws the most that do.
What is the difference between treble clef and bass clef paper?
Only the clef printed at the start of each staff. The treble (G) clef curls around the second line from the bottom, which marks that line as the G above middle C; it is used for higher instruments and voices and the right hand on piano. The bass (F) clef places its two dots either side of the fourth line, marking the F below middle C; it is used for low instruments and the piano's left hand. A grand staff joins one of each with a brace.
How do I read and write guitar tablature?
Each of the six TAB lines is a guitar string: the top line is the thinnest, high-pitched string and the bottom line is the thickest. You write a fret number on a line to show where to press that string, and 0 for an open string. Bass TAB uses four lines for the four strings of a bass guitar. Staff + TAB paper pairs a treble staff with the tablature so rhythm and fingering can be written together.