Black ink tattoo of a treble clef, time signature, rests and notes in a row around a forearm, shown in two photographs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Musical notation band on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A band of musical notation runs around the arm, beginning with a treble clef and a 4/4 time signature, followed by rests and a sequence of quavers and notes. The lines are solid black with uniform weight and no shading. The top photograph shows the design from a closer angle, and the lower one shows the rest of the band across the arm against a plain light background.

Forearm Music Musical note Treble clef

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody on the Hesketh Lass knew where the boy had got the song, only that he sang it over the potato peelings with his sleeve pushed to the elbow, and that it leapt at the start like a gull lifting off the rail. Cook Amos Dunning asked him to write it down so he could bang it out on the galley pan. The boy drew a clef first, curled like a wave turning back on itself, then the four and the four stacked one above the other, because that was how the tune wanted to be counted.

Keep reading

Amos could make no sense of the little stems and flags. He pinned the paper to the shelf above the flour bin and let it gather grease. Each dawn, while the kettle thought about boiling, he took it down and tried to find the tune hiding in it. The rests puzzled him most, those small zigzag marks that meant keep quiet. He learned to keep quiet. He learned that a quaver ran quicker than a crotchet, and that one long hollow note at the end meant stop and breathe.

The winter the Lass went missing off the Dogger, the boy's hammock hung empty and the paper stayed on its nail. Amos hummed what he could follow, and the men off watch came down one by one to listen, cap in hand, though none of them knew a crotchet from a cabbage. When the boat limped into Grimsby with a splintered mast and every name answered at the muster, they stood in the galley while the cook played the last bar on the pan, and he let that long round note hang until it had faded clean away.