Staff and tab paper
Blank manuscript and tablature ruled to a staff height you can measure with a ruler, not to whatever the PDF you found happened to be. No watermark, no fixed page count.
Every sheet of blank manuscript paper you can buy has already decided two things for you: how tall the staves are and how many fit on the page. Those two numbers are the whole product, and they are exactly what changes between a beginner copying out a scale, a songwriter sketching a lead sheet on the bus and someone engraving a part for a music stand three feet away. Here they are both controls, and the staff height is given in millimetres because that is the number a ruler can check.
Rastral numbers are on the same control as presets. A rastral size is a traditional engraver's name for one measurement — the distance from the bottom line of a five-line staff to the top line — so No. 3 is 7.0 mm and No. 6 is 5.5 mm, and neither is a different kind of thing from a number you type. Picking the preset and picking 7.0 mm do exactly the same thing, which is the honest way round: hardly anyone searching for blank staff paper knows the rastral table, and everyone can measure seven millimetres.
Tablature is sized by a different question and gets its own control. A tab line spacing has to hold a two-digit fret number between the lines, so it is set by what you are going to write rather than by a notation convention — four millimetres is comfortable for most hands, and it is a number rather than a guess. Guitar takes six lines, bass and ukulele four, and the staff-over-tab system pairs a five-line staff with a six-line tab as one braced unit.
There are no clefs on any of these sheets, and that is deliberate rather than unfinished. Commercial blank manuscript paper ships without them, because the clef belongs to the piece and not to the paper — and a hand-drawn treble clef that is very nearly right is worse than a clean empty staff. The grand staff does get its brace, because a brace is a curve rather than a glyph and it is the thing that makes a grand staff readable as one system.
Staff and tab paper by instrument
- Blank sheet musicFive-line staves · manuscript paper at any staff height
- Guitar tab paperSix lines · one per string, spacing you can set
- Bass tab paperFour lines · wider spacing for high fret numbers
- Ukulele tab paperFour lines · tighter spacing, short neck
- Grand staff paperTwo staves joined by a brace · piano, harp, organ
- Staff and tab paperNotation over tablature · joined as one system
Questions
What staff height should I choose?
For writing by hand, larger than printed music: 7.9 mm (rastral No. 1) or 9.2 mm (No. 0) leaves room for a pencil noteheadand its stem without crowding. Printed music sits around 7.0 mm, and the smaller rastral sizes below that are for engraved parts and study scores rather than anything you are going to write on. Whatever you pick, the sheet prints at exactly that measurement, so you can check it against a ruler.
How many staves fit on a page?
It depends entirely on the staff height, which is why the systems-per-page number is a control rather than a fixed twelve. At 7.9 mm on Letter, ten to twelve is comfortable; at 5.5 mm you can fit far more, and at 9.2 mm rather fewer. Ask for more than the page holds and the generator tells you how many actually fit instead of silently squashing them.
Why is there no treble clef?
Because a nearly-right one is worse than none. A treble clef is a difficult shape, and a version of it that is subtly wrong is the first thing a musician notices and the last thing they trust. Blank manuscript paper sold in shops does not print clefs either — the clef is part of the piece. The brace on the grand staff is drawn, because it is a curve rather than a glyph.
Will it print at the right size?
Yes, at 100% scale. The sheet is drawn in millimetres and the page size is declared to the printer, so a staff set to 7.0 mm measures 7.0 mm on paper. If your print dialogue is set to fit to page or shrink to fit, every measurement shrinks with it — print the calibration page once and you will know.
Can I use this for a piano piece?
Choose the grand staff. It draws two five-line staves joined by a brace and a systemic barline, with seven staff spaces between them, which is the usual working gap — wide enough that ledger lines coming down from the right hand and up from the left hand have somewhere to meet without colliding.
What is the difference between the tab pages and this one?
Nothing but the settings they arrive with. Each of the six sheets has its own page because they are six different searches, and each one opens this generator already set for it. Every control is still here on every page.
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