Note names

In chapter 4 you learned to find C by the group of two black keys. Its name is C: every synth video, piano roll and chord chart calls it that. An Italian or a Russian music teacher, though, calls the same key do. A MIDI keyboard, as you saw in chapter 3, knows no words at all and sends the number 60. Ableton Live labels the key C3, and a theory textbook C4.

One key, five names. It sounds like the start of a detective story, so this chapter is an investigation. Each name has its own history and answers its own question: which step of the scale it is, which letter, which octave, and what number the key has on the wire. Once the clues fit together, no program and no songbook will confuse you again.

One key, five names

Start at the scene of the crime. Press any key below: on the screen, on the computer keyboard or on a MIDI keyboard. The card shows all the names of that key at once. The "Labels on the keys" switch changes the system across the whole keyboard: go through all five and watch what stays put and what changes.

Syllables and letters behave alike: the seven white keys of every octave share the same seven names. They tell you "which of the seven". The MIDI number is different for every key: from 21 for the lowest key on a piano to 108 for the highest. Scientific notation, C4, sits in between: a letter plus an octave number.

Press "▲ octave" a few times. The syllable and the letter stay the same, the octave number goes up by one and the MIDI number by 12. Twelve keys to an octave: you counted them in the last chapter. That gives the key observation of the case. A note has a "which" name and a "where" name, and the different systems answer those two questions in different ways.

First clue: a hymn to St John

If you grew up with letters, do, re, mi can sound like nonsense syllables from a school music lesson. In much of the world they are the everyday names of the keys, and they have an author and a source: the Latin hymn to St John the Baptist, "Ut queant laxis". Below is its first stanza. The words are split into syllables, and under each syllable are its notes. Here the hymn is a tune on keys, with no words to it. Press "Just the line openings" first.

Six notes in a row, each one step higher than the last: C, D, E, F, G, A. Each of the first six half-lines of the hymn starts on the next white key up. Under those first notes stand the syllables Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. That is where the names come from: each step took the first syllable of the half-line that starts on it.

Now switch on "The whole hymn" and follow the highlight. The tune wanders up and down, but each of the first six half-lines opens on its own step. The "Under the syllables" switch labels the notes with syllables or with letters, so you can see that Mi, for example, really does start on E, the note called mi.

The words of the hymn are older than Guido: tradition credits them to Paul the Deacon, an 8th-century historian. The tune is a harder case. Guido may have written it himself, but more likely he took one that already existed: a version of it turns up in an 11th-century manuscript, set to an ode by Horace. Guido's achievement lies elsewhere. As far as we know, he was the first to turn the line openings into a system. Naming the steps with syllables like this is called solmization, from the syllables sol and mi.

Now play the hymn yourself. The "Play it yourself" button lights up the next key, and the hymn moves on when you press it. Every note is a white key in the octave above middle C, between C and A. And here are the first two half-lines on their own, as an exercise:

The first two half-lines of the hymn, from Ut to fibris. The next key lights up. For now the staff is just a picture: we learn to read it in chapter 10. Any tempo will do.

The Guidonian hand

Medieval drawings often show an open hand with the names of notes written on the joints and fingertips: the teacher pointed to a joint and the pupil named the note. It is called the Guidonian hand, but the diagram is not in Guido's surviving writings. Around 1105–1110 the chronicler Sigebert of Gembloux wrote that Guido taught with the joints of the hand, and the familiar drawing appears in manuscripts only in the 12th century. Different manuscripts put the notes on different joints, so there is no "correct" hand.

Where si and do came from

Guido's system had six syllables, and an octave has seven white keys. Look at the keyboard in the hymn in "ut re mi" mode: the seventh key carries a question mark. Medieval musicians had no use for a seventh syllable. They thought in chains of six steps and moved from one chain to another by elaborate rules that only historians remember today.

When music moved to seven steps, the seventh syllable came from the last line of the same hymn: Sancte Iohannes, "Saint John". The initials S and I gave si. Who proposed it, and when, is disputed. Sources name different people and dates anywhere from the late 16th to the 18th century, so you won't get an exact date here.

Ut was replaced too. It is a closed syllable, ending in a consonant, and in 17th-century Italy it gave way to an open do. You will often read that the theorist Giovanni Battista Doni came up with it, taking the first syllable of his own surname or of the word Dominus. But already in the 19th century the story was told with an "it is said", and no document backs it up. In France ut survives to this day: a symphony in C minor is a "symphonie en ut mineur".

In 19th-century England the teacher Sarah Glover changed si to ti, so that every syllable would start with a letter of its own: s was already taken by sol. That is why English-speaking teachers say ti where an Italian says si.

In Italy, France, Russia and many other countries the syllables are fixed names for the keys, exactly as letters are for you: do is always the white key to the left of the group of two, in any tune. Where English speakers meet do, re, mi, it usually works another way, with do moving to the first step of whatever key the music is in. The letters, though, are the same everywhere. Check that yours hold firm:

Second clue: the letters

Syllables are what notes are called in conversation in Rome or Moscow. English-speaking countries, Germany, music software and songbooks use Latin letters instead: the letter names C, D, E, F, G, A, B, which are do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si. That much is your home ground. But why did the first letter of the alphabet go to A, when the key everything starts from is C? Place your bet before you read on.

The letters are five centuries older than the syllables. In the 6th century the Roman philosopher Boethius, in his treatise De institutione musica ("The Fundamentals of Music"), marked the notes of the two octaves then in use with the first fourteen letters of the Latin alphabet, from A to O. The lowest note of that system, which came from the Greeks, was an A, so A is what it got. Listen to this "Boethius ladder" in the widget: fourteen white keys up from A2.

Around the year 1000 the letters began to repeat at the octave, just as the notes themselves repeat: A–G in the lower octave, a–g in the next. The system was extended one note down, to G, and that note was marked with the Greek letter gamma, Γ. Guido's syllable on this note gave the name gamma ut, shortened to gamut: the old English word for the whole range of notes, and today for the whole range of anything. The French gamme and the Russian word for a scale, "gamma", are the same Greek letter.

C became the main key much later, when the major scale became the main mode of European music: on the white keys, it is easiest to play starting from C. Press "White keys A to A" in the widget, then "Now start on C". These are two different modes on the same white keys, and in chapter 14 we work out why one sounds sadder. By then the letters had long been handed out, and nobody rewrote them.

The letters without octaves come first: C is C wherever it is. You know them already, so take this as a warm-up. The exercise names a letter, and any key with that name counts.

A letter is named: press that note in any octave. If you ever meet the syllables, C is do, D re, E mi, F fa, G sol, A la, B si.

The German H

The next clue trips up everyone who opens a German score or a Russian textbook for the first time. In Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, the Czech Republic and Russia, B natural is traditionally written not as B but as H. The letter B means B flat, the black key to the left of B. This is German naming, and Russian music schools use it too.

The reason lies in medieval books. B came in two kinds then, a lower one and a higher one, and both were written with the letter b. The lower was a round b, the higher an angular, square one. In Gothic script the square b looked like an h, and in the German lands that is how it was read. The round b grew into the flat sign ♭, and the square one into the natural sign ♮. We come to both in chapter 11.

The most famous trace of German naming is Bach's surname. B-A-C-H in German is B flat, A, C, B natural: four notes that spell a name. Bach wove them into the last, unfinished fugue of The Art of Fugue, where they open its third subject.

Listen to B-A-C-H: four notes huddled close together.

A German keyboard player asks you to play H. Which key do they mean?

B: the white key to the right of the group of three B flat: the black key to the left of B A, because H comes after G

In German naming H is B natural, and B is B flat. In English the same white key is B, so the one letter B means different keys in a German text and an English one.

The notes are named in German: H is B, B is B flat, Fis is F sharp, Es is E flat. Press the named key in any octave.

Letters in the songbook

Letters are not only for single notes. Songbooks, chord websites and DAWs write chord symbols above the lyrics: Am, F, C, G. The letter is the main, bottom note of the chord, a small m means minor, and a 7 means a fourth note has been added to the three. Tap a chord and the keyboard shows its notes.

Am is a minor chord on A: A, C, E. G is a major chord on G: G, B, D. The line "Am F C G" is one of the most worn-out progressions in pop. What major and minor are, and why a chord is made of these particular notes, is the business of chapter 14 and chapter 15. For now it is enough that the first letter tells you at once which key to build on.

Third clue: the octave number

The syllable and the letter answer "which of the seven". But a piano has eight Cs, and you often need to say which one you mean. Look at the map of all 88 keys of a piano, with the octave bands along the top. Press "Every C, bottom to top", then try the keys yourself.

The older way names the octaves with words. Chapter 4 mentioned that these names exist, and here they are. The octave from middle C up is the one-line octave, and above it come the two-line, three-line, four-line and five-line. Below the one-line octave is the small octave, below that the great octave, then the contra and the sub-contra. On a piano the sub-contra and the five-line octave are incomplete: three keys at the bottom, A, B flat and B, and a single C at the top. German and Russian schools still use these names (in Russian the one-line octave is simply "the first"), so you will meet them in books from there.

Scientific notation puts a number after the letter instead of a word. Middle C is C4, the A above it is A4, and the C below it is C3. In the 20th century American acousticians fixed this notation in their standards, which is why it is called scientific pitch notation, or American standard pitch notation. The lowest key of a piano is A0, and the highest is C8.

Octave in words	Scientific notation	MIDI numbers
sub-contra (from A on a piano)	A0 … B0	21–23
contra	C1 … B1	24–35
great	C2 … B2	36–47
small	C3 … B3	48–59
one-line	C4 … B4	60–71
two-line	C5 … B5	72–83
three-line	C6 … B6	84–95
four-line	C7 … B7	96–107
five-line (a single C on a piano)	C8	108

Here is the main trap: the octave number changes at C, not at A. Right after B3 comes C4, even though A and B come before C in the alphabet. The letters were handed out from A, but the octaves are counted from C. One notation carries the legacy of two eras.

C4 sits in the middle of a piano keyboard, which makes it the handiest landmark. Hence its name, middle C. Russian has the same name, word for word: srednyaya do. On the map it is marked with a dot. Its frequency is about 261.6 Hz, and the A of the same octave, A4, is exactly 440 Hz. Orchestras and synths tune to that A, as you saw in chapter 1.

And what is c¹ in older books?

German and Russian textbooks, and some English ones, use yet another notation, linked with the name of the physicist Hermann Helmholtz. The octave is shown by the case of the letter and a mark above it. The great octave is capitals (C, D…), the small octave lower case (c, d…), the one-line octave c¹ (English books often write c′), the two-line c², and so on. Middle C here is c¹, not C4. Music software doesn't use this notation, but you may come across it in a theory book.

Now the octave matters. The exercise names a note with its octave, and only that one key counts. A hint: the Cs are labelled, so count from them.

And the reverse task. A key lights up, and you name it with its number. Look for the nearest C to the left: its number is the octave number.

Fourth clue: the MIDI number

You know the last clue from chapter 3: a MIDI keyboard sends not a name but a note number from 0 to 127. It is simple to work out: twelve for each octave, plus the key's place within the octave. C is 0, C sharp 1, D 2, and so on up to B, which is 11:

$$n = 12 \cdot (\text{octave} + 1) + \text{place in the octave}$$

Middle C: 12 · 5 + 0 = 60. The A above it: 12 · 5 + 9 = 69. The E below middle C, E3: 12 · 4 + 4 = 52. The 1 in brackets is there because note 0 is the C an octave below C0, which scientific notation calls C−1. A piano has no notes that low, but MIDI knows them.

Syllables, letters and octaves were invented by people for people. The MIDI number was invented for cables, and it is the only name that can't be read two ways. The exercise gives a number, and you find the key. No mental arithmetic needed: remember that 60 is middle C and that each octave is 12 up or down.

Why middle C is C3 in Ableton

Now the most baffling part of the case. Open the piano roll in Ableton Live, Logic Pro or Cubase: middle C, note 60, is labelled C3. In FL Studio the same key is C5. In textbooks and in this course it is C4. Is somebody wrong?

Nobody is. The 1983 MIDI standard fixed only the numbers: 60 is middle C. It said nothing about how to label the octaves, and the makers went their own ways. Yamaha called note 60 C3, so its note 0 is C−2. Ableton Live and Cubase label their keys the same way, and Logic Pro does so by default, with a setting to change it. Roland, Korg and scientific notation call note 60 C4. FL Studio starts counting from C0 on note 0, so its middle C is C5. Reaper shows C4 and lets you shift the octave number in its preferences.

Where	Note 60 is labelled	Note 0
Scientific notation, this course, Roland, Korg	C4	C−1
Ableton Live, Cubase, Logic Pro (by default), Yamaha	C3	C−2
FL Studio	C5	C0

The sound is the same either way: press note 60, and every program plays middle C at 261.6 Hz. Only the label on the screen differs. But a label can cost you an hour. A tutorial says "put the bass on C1", you enter the note in a different program, and the bass lands an octave too high or too low.

An FL Studio tutorial says "play C5". Which key do you press on your MIDI keyboard?

Middle C: note 60, C4 The C above middle C: note 72 The C below middle C: note 48

FL Studio labels note 60 as C5, so its C5 is our C4, middle C. In Ableton the same key would be C3.

The last exercise is about exactly this. A program names a note, and you find it on the keyboard. Watch which program gave the label.

Each program names the note in its own way. Convert it to scientific notation (Ableton, Logic, Cubase: add 1 to the octave; FL Studio: take 1 away; Reaper: leave it as it is) and press the key in that octave.

To make the skill stick, visit the "Notes on the keyboard" trainer: its "The exact octave" level is the task from this chapter, only longer.

Case closed

The four clues fit together. Do, re, mi are the openings of the lines of a hymn, which Guido of Arezzo made into names for the steps almost a thousand years ago. The letters are Boethius's legacy, which is why the alphabet starts on A and why Germans write H. The octave number changes at C, and middle C is C4. The MIDI number is the only name that can't be read two ways: 60 is 60, whatever your software calls the key.

Now you can read the chords in a songbook, follow a tutorial for any DAW, talk notes with an Italian or a German, and find a key by any of its names. You know which keys to press. But music is also about when: notes fall on even beats, and you need to feel those beats without a metronome. That is where chapter 6 begins.

The notes in the Notebook now have names. Choose how they are shown: letters, do re mi or MIDI numbers, and the tune you played becomes a line of names. In the next chapter your track gets a tempo, and you will tap it in yourself.