Lines a Whole Step Apart, 5 Lines per Octave
From the Guided Tour: A number of notation designers have used a five-line chromatic staff with one ledger line. This is a total of six lines spanning an octave, each spaced a whole step apart. The ledger line allows multiple one-octave staves to be "stacked," placed contiguously for greater pitch range. In many cases these staves look exactly like the traditional staff (which would cause confusion), but some systems introduce bold lines or change the position of the ledger line.
Basic 5-Line Systems by Multiple Designers (1847 - 1920)
Untitled by Grace Frix (1992)
C-Symmetrical Semitone Notation by Ronald Sadlier (1991)
Notation Godjevatz by Velizar Godjevatz (1948)
Basic 5 Line Notations by Multiple Designers
A number of notation inventors have used this familiar 5-line staff, including Lukas Brandt, Grace Frix, Edward Huntington, Heinrich "Autodidactus" Richter, Hans Sacher, Karl Schumann, Heinrich Vincent, Hermann-Josef Wilbert, and Kazimierz Wolf. Similar to traditional notation, ledger lines appear below and above each staff. Almost all have made the first ledger line C as in traditional notation, but in Grace Frix's system (the second staff pictured above), the first ledger line is D. This may have been because D is a point of symmetry in the pattern of white and black keys on the piano and other keyboard instruments. Some systems have a one octave standard staff, others have a two octave standard staff like the one shown above.
Most of these notations have early invention dates, so it may be that the availability of standard music manuscript paper, and the difficulty of producing novel manuscript paper, were factors in their design.
Earliest documentation: 1847 (Richter), 1859 (Schumann), 1862 (Vincent), 1905 (Sacher), 1920 (Huntington), 1992 (Frix). Brandt, Wilbert, and Wolf have unknown dates, but are documented in Albert Brennink's Chromatic Notation (1983).
Source: Directory of Music Notation Proposals, section/page: 10/6,14,17,25,26,28,32,34,36, 11/3, 13/12,33,42,74,82,87,97,103,104
Manuscript Paper: Discontinuous Staves, Continuous Staves
C-Symmetrical Semitone Notation by Ronald Sadlier
Identical to the regular five-line staff above, except that the second and fourth lines are heavier than the other lines. As with most of these five-line systems, the single ledger line is C.
Earliest documentation: 1991
Source: Directory of Music Notation Proposals, section/page: 10/27, 11/3, 13/84
Manuscript Paper: Discontinuous Staves Continuous Staves
Notation Godjevatz by Velizar Godjevatz
In this system the single ledger line appears in the middle of the staff (representing F# and Gb), with two sets of three lines above and below. One can think of the sets of three lines as half (or more precisely three fifths) of a five-line staff like those above. When this standard one-octave staff is extended to two or more octaves it more closely resembles the five-line staves. The lowest of the lower three lines and the highest of the upper three lines both represent C and are optionally heavier than the other lines. This is useful for when the staff is extended to two or more octaves, as it is in the image above. (Interestingly, Godjevatz allowed for the option to use accidental signs with his system, both in key signatures and for accidental notes.)
Earliest documentation: 1948
Source: Directory of Music Notation Proposals, section/page: 10/15, 11/4, 13/35
Similar Notations: NotaGraph
Manuscript Paper: Discontinuous Staves Continuous Staves
