Also called a staff. In notated music, the group of five horizontal lines upon and in-between which notes are written. The lines and spaces represent increasing pitch from bottom to top. The precise correspondence between line and pitch is determined by the clef which is found at the beginning of every stave. The stave will occasionally have short leger lines added above or below when needed for notes that fall outside of the range of the stave. It is common to group staves of simultaneous parts into a score by joining them with a vertical line at the left edge of the page and often by linking their bar lines.