One of the most charming things about sheet music is how elegant it looks. The notation we use today was obviously developed in a time when penmanship was still taught at school.

Personally, my music teacher gave up on me ever drawing a treble clef and eventually accepted that “odd-looking G” was the best I would ever manage.

She could have saved both of us a lot of frustration had she known about this little piece of stationery, which allows you to easily sketch all the symbols the average musician is ever likely to need.

A set of printed stave lines even helps you with positioning them correctly, though you’ll need a noligraph to actually draw them once you’ve filled the included pre-printed sheets.

Aside from this (and the symbols not fitting perfectly on all stave lines), the only real drawback to this stencil is having to use a mechanical instead of wooden pencil to pass through the narrow grooves (or a fine-tipped pen, of course).

As long as that is something you can live with, this thing speeds up all kinds of musical tasks immensely, without the result looking like an ink-soaked spider wandered across the page.

Music students at any level will love to have one of these stencils.

If you like, you can add a set of composing dice, and make sure to wrap it all up with some music-themed ribbon.