A musical symbol placed at the beginning of a staff to show the pitch of the notes, such as the treble clef or bass clef. It tells musicians which lines and spaces match which notes.
From French "clef" meaning "key," from Latin "clavis" meaning "key." It is called a key because it "unlocks" how to read the notes on the staff.
A clef is literally the "key" to decoding sheet music—without it, the dots are meaningless. The word reminds you that reading music is a kind of secret code that needs a key symbol to open it.
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