The bass clef's other name is the F-clef, because it started out as a letter 'F' sitting on a staff, eventually modifying into today's bass clef. There is another clef, called a C-clef. Wherever the C-clef is centered, that line is considered to be the note 'Middle C'. As you can see, the clef has been placed so that it is centered on the 4th line. Music written in the vocal tenor clef should be read as if it is in treble clef, then sung one octave lower.
All musical staves require a clef of some sort.
Even unpitched percussion music uses a clef. This 2-line staff, with the neutral clef at the beginning would be ideal for two different sizes of tom toms. Here is each clef with a key signature of seven sharps and seven flats correctly placed. B.Mus Any teacher or student of music may reproduce these pages in print , without electronic reformatting, provided that each lesson or other resource copied from the EMT site has this copyright notice attached. The material may not be placed on any other server.