Blank staff paper, drawn to the sheet you need and printed from your browser. Pick a clef or none, a time signature, how many staves and how much room between them, then send it to a printer or save it as a PDF. The preview below redraws as you change a setting. No account, nothing to install, like the rest of our free guitar tools.
What you can set
Every setting under the preview, and what it changes on the printed sheet. The preview redraws on each change, so you can try one and look rather than read.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Staves per page | How many five-line staves to print, from 1 to 48. Past what one sheet holds, the rest flows onto the next page. |
| Space between staves px | The gap under every staff, from 8 to 120. Room for lyrics, fingerings, chord symbols or a teacher's comments. |
| Clef | Treble, bass, the four C clefs, or none. It prints at the start of every staff. |
| Time signature | Printed after the clef on every staff: 4/4, 3/4, 6/8, 12/8 or whatever you type as two numbers with a slash. Leave it empty for none. |
| Bars per staff | Evenly spaced bar lines, from 0 to 64. Zero leaves the staff open, which suits dictation. |
| Final double bar | A thick double line at the end of the last staff. |
| Orientation and outer margin | Portrait for exercises and notebooks. Landscape gives each staff more width, for long phrases and analysis. |
| Title, footer and font | A heading at the top and a line at the bottom, in the font, size and weight of your choice. |
| Colors and theme | Text, lines and page background, one by one, or one of the ready themes: classic light, ivory paper, soft dark. |
| Export | Print / PDF opens your browser print dialog, where you can print or save a PDF. Export PNG and Export SVG save image files instead, one per sheet. |
Which clef to print
The clef decides which note sits on which line, so it depends on the instrument or the voice that will read the sheet. All seven are in the menu.
| Clef | Who reads it |
|---|---|
| Treble (G clef) | Guitar, voice, violin, flute, the right hand of the piano. Guitar music is written in treble clef and sounds an octave lower than written. |
| Bass (F clef) | Bass guitar, cello, bassoon, low voices, the left hand of the piano. |
| No clef | Ear training, dictation, rhythm exercises, or a staff you want to decide on later. |
| Soprano (C clef, 1st line) | Older vocal scores. Rare today, useful for reading early music. |
| Mezzo-soprano (C clef, 2nd line) | Early music and clef reading drills. |
| Alto (C clef, 3rd line) | Viola, and some trombone parts. |
| Tenor (C clef, 4th line) | The upper range of cello, bassoon and trombone. |
Which layout for which job
| Job | What to set |
|---|---|
| Dictation or ear training | No clef or treble, 6 to 10 staves, wide spacing, bars only if the rhythm matters. |
| Melody and voice | Treble clef, 12 staves at 56 px, room under each for the lyrics. |
| Harmony and analysis | Landscape, 4 bars per staff, wide outer margin for chord symbols and Roman numerals. |
For a pupil's sheet, fewer staves with plenty of room and the date in the footer. For your own transcriptions, a compact page with the bar lines showing, so you can count your way back to a passage.
Staff paper for guitarists
Most guitarists read tab first and come to the staff later, usually to write down a melody or the rhythm that a tab leaves out. Two things help.
First, know where the written notes live on the neck. Our guitar fretboard notes page shows every note on every string, with a quiz to make it stick, so you can turn a note on the staff into a fret without guessing.
Second, when you want the staff and the tab together, type it instead. The guitar tab maker writes the staff above the tab as you enter fret numbers, and plays the result back. For tab on its own, by hand, print some blank tab paper; for the chords of a song bar by bar, a blank chord grid.
Frequently asked questions
Which clef should I choose for guitar?
Can I print staff paper with no clef?
How many staves fit on one page?
How do I print the staff paper or save it as a PDF?
Who made this
Guitar Social Club is the work of Yohann Abbou, a guitar teacher in Paris. He teaches adults, which shapes everything here: people with jobs, limited practice time and a clear idea of the songs they want to play. A fixed PDF of staff paper never has the right clef, the right number of staves or enough room for what you want to write, which is why this one is drawn to order. The rest of our free guitar tools work the same way, and none of them asks you to sign up first.
More about Yohann on his page, and about why Guitar Social Club exists.