Note
A note is a sound with a definite pitch, and every note has a name. The seven names start again every octave, sit on the white keys of the piano and are said in two ways: as syllables, such as do, re, mi, or as letters, such as C, D, E. On paper, a note is a sign placed on the staff.
A note is a sound with a definite pitch. Musicians use the word in this sense when they say the singer "held that high note", or that the guitar "has a note out of tune".
As in the topic on the properties of sound, a handclap and a shaker produce sounds without a definite pitch; a piano string and a guitar string produce sounds with a definite pitch. The sounds of those strings are notes, and each note has a name.
The seven names and the octave
The notes are called C, D, E, F, G, A and B. After B comes another, higher C, and the seven names start again.
The names repeat like the days of the week: after Sunday comes another Monday, which belongs to another week but has the same name because it holds the same place in the cycle.
and are neighbours, very close in pitch, and they sound like two different notes. and , on the other hand, are much further apart, and yet the second sounds like a return to the starting point, only higher. That is why it has the same name.
The distance to the next note with the same name is called an octave. From one G to the next there are eight names: G, A, B, C, D, E, F and G. Acoustics explains why two notes an octave apart sound so alike, and Blatter gives that explanation in terms of vibration (Blatter 2007, art. 2).
The name alone does not indicate which octave a note is in; the number that follows it on the buttons above does. Here that number follows scientific pitch notation, and numbering conventions have a topic of their own.
Where they sit on the keyboard
On the piano, the seven names are on the white keys. The black keys come in groups of two and of three, and each white key is identified by its position relative to those groups. C is the white key just to the left of each group of two. From there to the right, each white key takes the next name, up to the next C, again just 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 have new names: they have the same seven, each with a sign added, and that is the subject of the topic on accidentals.
Two ways of naming the same notes
In Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French, notes have syllable names. In English, German and much of the world, they have letter names:
| Syllable | Letter |
|---|---|
| do | C |
| re | D |
| mi | E |
| fa | F |
| sol | G |
| la | A |
| si | B |
The list of letters does not start on A: A is la, and do is C.
Chord symbols are written in letters, so even musicians who only say do, re, mi already use them: to them, is do major, and is la minor. The English edition of this site uses letters both in running text and in chord symbols.
The syllables come from the Middle Ages, and the syllable for C was not always do: for a long time it was ut. Med summarises how notation came to these names and to the staff they are written on (Med 1996, ch. II).
The note on the page
The word "note" names both what is heard and what is read, as the word "word" names both what is spoken and what is written. Lacerda separates the two senses in the very chapter in which he introduces the note (Lacerda 1966, ch. II).
On paper, a note is a sign placed on the staff, and it indicates two things at once: its position indicates the pitch, and its shape the duration.
This is the opening of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". The first two notes sit low, and the leap to the next two can be seen on the staff before it is even heard. 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 indicate that the first note is a C: the sign at the start of the staff, the clef, does. Without a clef, a position only shows whether one note is higher or lower than another; the clef defines the name of each line and each space. Lacerda insists on this point before he teaches how to read any note (Lacerda 1966, ch. III).
References
Blatter, Alfred. 2007. Revisiting music theory: a guide to the practice. New York: Routledge.
Lacerda, Osvaldo. 1966. Compêndio de teoria elementar da música. 3rd ed. São Paulo: Ricordi Brasileira.
Med, Bohumil. 1996. Teoria da música. 4th ed. Brasília: Musimed.
