Music paper
Blank Staff Paper
Manuscript paper built to your specification, any number of staves, real clef glyphs, grand-staff braces for piano, and staff height set in millimetres so it matches the rastral size you actually want.
Four steps
How to print blank staff paper
- 1
Choose a layout
Single staves for one instrument, or grand staff for piano and keyboard.
- 2
Set the stave count
Ten to twelve suits adults; six to eight gives beginners more room.
- 3
Add clefs and a header
Pick which clef prints on each system and add a title and composer line.
- 4
Print at 100%
Download the PDF and print at 100% so the staff height is exact.
Choosing the right manuscript paper
The single decision that matters most is staff height. Write on staves that are too small and noteheads blur into one another, accidentals collide, and anything above the stave runs out of room. Too large and a two-minute piece sprawls across five pages.
| Use | Staves per page | Staff height |
|---|---|---|
| Beginner / children | 6–8 | 9–11 mm |
| Teaching, choral parts | 8–10 | 8–9 mm |
| General composition | 10–12 | 7 mm |
| Piano (grand staff) | 5–6 systems | 7 mm |
| Sketching | 14–18 | 5–6 mm |
| Full score | Custom | 4–5 mm |
Grand staff and piano writing
Piano music needs treble and bass staves braced together, with the barlines running through both so the two hands stay aligned vertically. Grand staff mode handles the brace, the joining barline and the inter-stave gap, get that gap wrong by hand and ledger lines from the two staves start colliding in the middle.
Five or six systems per A4 page is normal for piano. Fewer if the writing is dense with ledger lines and dynamics.
Working on paper before software
Notation software is excellent at engraving and poor at thinking. A great many composers still sketch by hand because a pencil imposes no decisions about spelling, voice assignment or layout, you can write an ambiguous rhythm and resolve it later, which most software refuses to let you do.
Print a batch at your preferred settings and keep them in a folder. The friction of generating a fresh sheet is precisely what stops people sketching.
Related music paper
Guitarists and bassists want TAB paper, which supports four to twelve strings and can be interleaved with staves for combined notation. For general note-taking about music theory, lined paper or Cornell notes work better than manuscript.
Answers