A clef is a sign placed on a music staff that indicates what pitch is represented by each line and space on the staff. The history of Western musical notation describes an effort toward the development of a simple, symbolic representation of pitch and rhythm. It begins near the end of the 9th century when notation for the Plainsong of the Western Church, better known as Gregorian Chant, was first recorded with “neumes”. These were simple dashes or dots above lyrics that indicated a relative change in pitch. At the end of the 10th century, musical scribes increased the precision of their early notation by introducing a horizontal line to indicate a base pitch. The pitch of this line was indicated by a letter at its start – typically F or C and, as higher range songs become more common, G. Neumes were no longer relative only to one another, but to a standard. This was the beginning of the musical staff. These initial letters evolved over time into the stylized representations that we know as clefs today. The treble clef is a standardized representation of the letter G, while the bass clef, also known as the F-clef, is a more dramatic unrecognizable evolution of the letter F. A possible addition to this evolution was suggested in a 1908 article in The Musical Times, which argued that the contemporary form of the treble clef is a result of 17th century notational technique in which multiple symbols were used to indicate both pitch and vocal sound, with “G, Sol” being a common combination that was eventually shortened to G.S. and then “gradually corrupted by careless transcription” into the treble clef. In a time before mechanical reproducibility, the standardization of signs was an unfamiliar concept. These notations were all written by hand: the inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies of each scribe naturally resulted in some variability of representation, sometimes even on the same page. Additionally, the handwriting was noticeably fancier than today’s script. The scribes challenged by copying these notational manuscripts made mistakes and additions, until eventually the copy bore little resemblance to the original. Use of the C-clef has declined over the 20th century to be replaced by the alto clef and tenor clef. Today, the alto clef is used primarily in viola music while the tenor is occasionally used for bassoon, trombone and cello. The F-clef is used for lower-brass notation as well as for the bass and, every kid who was forced to take piano lessons knows, the left hand of keyboard instruments. The instruments that use treble clef include the violin, woodwinds, higher brass instruments, and of course the right hand of keyboard instruments. Its wide use has led it becoming cartoon shorthand to graphically indicate musicality. It seems appropriate that its development was incidental to the preservation and proliferation of the music itself.