Names of notes in musicology
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Dear all:

    I am happy to report that I am so busy making music, I have not had time to keep up with everything or, when I did, participate.

    Here's one of those occasional problems: I know there are many ways to refer to specific notes when you are talking or writing. I find that, practically, almost everyone knows what you mean when you start with the lowest C on the piano: C1. I say my highest note is G4 on a good day and everyone knows that is the G above middle C.

    Books aren't consistent, and the only one that I can't get Fred Internet to cough up is when they write about notes as A,a, or a', etc., as in, The melody stays between A and a' or some such. (Since I don't know what it means, I am not sure that is a good example.) I am quite sure people here can help me.

    Many thanks.

    Kenneth
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    Middle C = C4 = c' = 2ft C (approximate open organ pipe column to produce this note). From there, going up, octave by octave, we have:

    C one octave above Middle C = C5 = c'' = 1ft C
    C two octaves above Middle C = C6 = c'''
    C three octaves above Middle C = C7 = c''''
    C four octaves above Middle C = C8 = c''''' = highest note on a piano keyboard

    And, going down, octave by octave, we have:

    C one octave below Middle C = C3 = c = 4ft C
    C two octaves below Middle C = C2 = C = 8ft C = lowest note usual organ keyboard
    C three octaves below Middle C = C1 = CC = 16ft C = lowest C on piano keyboard
    C four octaves below Middle C = C0 = CCC = 32ft C
    C five octaves below Middle C = C-1 = CCCC = 64ft C

    Thus we have the ranges:

    C-1 – B-1<=> CCCC – BBBB = MIDI notes 0 – 11
    C0 – B0 <=> CCC – BBB = MIDI notes 12 – 23
    C1 – B1 <=> CC – BB = MIDI notes 24 – 35
    C2 – B2 <=> C – B = MIDI notes 36 – 47
    C3 – B3 <=> c – b = MIDI notes 48 – 59
    C4 – B4 <=> c' – b' = MIDI notes 60 – 71
    C5 – B5 <=> c'' – b'' = MIDI notes 72 – 83
    C6 – B6 <=> c''' – b''' = MIDI notes 84 – 95
    C7 – B7 <=> c'''' – b'''' = MIDI notes 96 – 107
    C8 – B8 <=> c''''' – b''''' = MIDI notes 108 – 119
    C9 – G9 <=> c'''''' – g'''''' = MIDI notes 120 – 127

    You might see printed on (especially older) organ pipes things like CC, eg. for a 16ft open diapason pipe.

    Instead of something like CCC, you might also encounter C with two "subprimes", viz. C,,
    (often commas are used for the subscript primes).

    Hope this helps.

    Thanked by 3ronkrisman amindthatsuits Heath
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Immensely--the difficulty of asking the internet for things like c' was formidable. Many options, none the one I wanted. Now we all have a wonderfully useful chart!

    Many thanks.

    Kenneth
  • RomanticStringsRomanticStrings
    Posts: 339
    That seems to be the system used in LilyPond. You can either use the system to state explicit pitches, or set a pitch as a reference pitch (such as \relative c'), in which case your first note will be the one closest to that, and then the next pitch is the one closest to the previous note. You can then use prime and subprime (' and ,) as relative up or down, when the note is a fifth or more away.

    Now that I write that, I wonder if that really throws people who know well the prime and subprime method as explicit note labeling, rather than as a system of relative pitch.
  • Andrew_Malton
    Posts: 1,187
    For more details, it happens that Wikipedia is pretty good on these issues: see Scientific pitch notation and its many cross references.
    Thanked by 1amindthatsuits
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Yes, Wikipedia has some great things on music notation. I always figure that a particular fan of that topic decided to make it really good. For instance, in my field, which is English language, many of the pages on pronunciation are first rate, and it has the most complete list of irregular verbs in English that I can find, including archaic forms from literature.

    Thanks again.

    Kenneth
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