I know this is a viola forum, but what with all the talk of clefs it`s got me thinking: was there ever a clef that doesn`t use even spaces between the notes, doesn`t use patterns, etc.? I`m not just talking about western staves and tab. What about eastern music or the earliest music notation methods?

The staff originally had only one line and was necessarily fairly vague. More lines were gradually added, more or less one by one.

"Clef" in French (also spelled "cle" with an acute accent over the "e") means "key", not as is "key of C major" but as in "key to the puzzle". The key to the puzzle of finding out what note a certain dot on a line or space represents is what letter you write at the beginning of a staff and on what line or space you put that letter. The alto clef puts a "C" on the second line from the top, and that "C" was originally written "C" plain as day. There used to be all sorts of clefs, any clef a given composer or transcriber felt like using in fact. Needless to say, this chaotic state of affairs made sight-reading fairly untenable, and this is why today we only have three clef letters (C, F, and G) and four clefs.

So Re: "..was there ever a clef that doesn`t use even spaces between the notes..."

The one-line STAFF didn`t use spaces betweens, of course, considering there can be no "between lines" where there`s only one line.

Re: "...doesn`t use patterns..."

I think it`s fair to say that alphabetical (scalar) ordering is intrinsic to the idea of the clef.

Re: "I`m not just talking about western staves and tab. What about eastern music or the earliest music notation methods?"

The clef is an invention of Western music, and the earliest Western notations didn`t have clefs.

I`ll try again:

So Re: "..was there ever a clef that doesn`t use even spaces between the notes..."

The one-line STAFF didn`t use spaces between lines, of course, considering there can be no "between lines" where there`s only one line.

Re: "...doesn`t use patterns..."

I think it`s fair to say that alphabetical (scalar) ordering is intrinsic to the idea of the clef.

Re: "I`m not just talking about western staves and tab. What about eastern music or the earliest music notation methods?"

The clef is an invention of Western music, and the earliest Western notation didn`t have clefs.

Wow Scotch. Wow.

I`m ashamed to say that you just owned me quite thoroughly.

I`m not quite sure what this Internet phrase "owned me" means, but it certainly was not my intention to shame or disgrace or show you up. Yours was a reasonable and entertaining question. I did my best to answer it.

Boy oh boy Scotch

I never lose interest in getting my ideas bludgeoned by your intelligence

Scotch: "What is the `owned... me` you speak of? I say old chap, your foreign dialect seems to have quite puzzled my intellect. Why don`t we mull over it at tea-time?"

Just kidding! You`re not British!

Are you?