Note

When someone says a singer "held that high note", or that a guitar "has a note out of tune", they are using the word the way musicians do. A note is a sound with a definite pitch: a sound you can sing back.

It is the same test as in the properties of sound. A handclap or a shaker fails it; a piano key or a guitar string passes. And a sound with a recognisable pitch can be given a name, which is what makes it a note.

Seven names that come back

The notes are called C, D, E, F, G, A and B. After B the list does not end: another C comes, higher, and the seven names start again.

It works like the days of the week. After Sunday comes another Monday, and nobody finds that odd: it is a different week, but the day has the same name because it holds the same place in the cycle.

Listen to the difference. Play G3 and then A3: they are neighbours, very close in pitch, and they sound like two different things. Now play G3 and then G4: the distance is much larger, and still the second sounds like a return to where you started, only higher. That is why it has the same name.

The distance to the next note with the same name is called an octave. Count the names from one G to the next, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and there are eight. Why two notes an octave apart sound so alike is a question for acoustics, and Blatter answers it through vibration (Blatter 2007, art. 2).

Just as "Monday" does not say which week, the name alone does not say which octave a note is in. That is what the number after the name on the buttons above is for. Octave numbering conventions differ between countries, and they have a topic of their own.

Where they sit on the keyboard

On the piano, the seven names are the white keys. To find your way, look at the black ones: they come in groups of two and of three. C is the white key just to the left of each group of two. From there, each white key to the right is the next name, until you reach the next C, again to the left of a group of two.

The pattern of black keys, two and three, two and three, repeats every octave, along with the names. And the black keys are notes too. They do not get new names: they use the same seven with a sign added, which is the subject of the topic on accidentals.

Two ways to call the same notes

In English, German and much of the world, notes have letter names. In Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French, they have syllable names:

| Syllable | dó | ré | mi | fá | sol | lá | si | | -------- | -- | -- | -- | -- | --- | -- | -- | | Letter | C | D | E | F | G | A | B |

Mind the order: the syllables start on C, not on A. Do is C, and la is A.

In Brazil, even musicians who only ever say dó, ré, mi write chord symbols in letters: C is the C major chord, and Am is A minor. That is why the Portuguese side of this site names notes in syllables in running text and keeps letters in chord symbols.

The syllables come from the Middle Ages, and C was not always called do: for a long time its syllable was ut. Anyone curious about how notation arrived at these names, and at the staff they are written on, will find a summary in Med (Med 1996, ch. II).

The note on the page

The word "note" covers both what you hear and what you read, the way "word" covers both what you say and what you write. Lacerda separates the two senses in the very chapter where he introduces the note (Lacerda n.d., ch. II).

On the page, a note is a sign placed on the staff, and it answers two questions at once: its position gives the pitch, and its shape gives the duration.

This is the opening of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". Follow the notes with your eyes: the first two sit low, and the leap to the next two is visible before you even hear it. The names are C, C, G, G, A, A and G. The last one has a different shape because it lasts twice as long.

But the staff on its own does not say the first note is a C. The sign at its start, the clef, does. Without a clef, a position only shows whether one note is higher or lower than another; with a clef, every line and every space gets a name. Lacerda insists on this before he teaches the reading of a single note (Lacerda n.d., ch. III).

What comes next

The seven names open several paths. The distances between them are not all equal, and that is where tone and semitone come from. The black keys call for accidentals. Reading names on the page calls for the staff and the clef. And knowing which C is which calls for octave numbering.