The music staff is the foundation for music notation, consisting of a set of five horizontal lines and the four spaces that are between the lines. The term "staff" is more common in American English and "stave" is used in British English, but the plural in both instances is "staves."
In Western musical notation, the staff or stave is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that each represent a different musical pitch or in the case of a percussion staff, different percussion instruments.
