music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

, letter notation is a system of representing a set of pitches, for example, the notes of a scale, by letters. For the complete Western diatonic scale, for example, these would be the letters A-G, possibly with a trailing symbol to indicate a half-step raise (''sharp'', ) or a half-step lowering (''flat'', ). This is the most common way of specifying a note in speech or in written text in English or German. In Germany, Scandinavia, and parts of Central and Eastern Europe, H is used instead of B, and B is used instead of B. In

traditional Irish music Irish traditional music (also known as Irish trad, Irish folk music, and other variants) is a genre of folk music that developed in Ireland. In ''A History of Irish Music'' (1905), W. H. Grattan Flood wrote that, in Gaelic Ireland, there we ...

, where almost all tunes are restricted to two octaves, for notes in the lower octave to written in lower case while those in the upper octave to be written in upper case. If we consider the chromatic scale, new sounds are obtained by lowering or raising the 7 diatonic notes by a semitone by means of flats (♭) and sharps (♯). Use of solfege or letter names depends on language. For a more complete table and explanation, see

Musical note In music, a note is the representation of a musical sound. Notes can represent the pitch and duration of a sound in musical notation. A note can also represent a pitch class. Notes are the building blocks of much written music: discretizatio ...

. Western letter pitch notation has the virtue of identifying discrete pitches, but among its disadvantages are its occasional inability to represent pitches or inflections lying outside those theoretically derived, or (leaving aside chordal and

tablature Tablature (or tabulature, or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches. Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuela, as well as many fr ...

notations) representing the relationship between pitches—e.g., it does not indicate the difference between a whole step and a half step, knowledge of which was so critical to Medieval and Renaissance performers and theorists.

History

The earliest known letter notation in the Western musical tradition appear in the textbook on music ''De institutione musica'' by the 6th-century philosopher

Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the tr ...

. A modified form is next found in the ''Dialogus de musica'' (ca. 1000) by Pseudo-Odo, in a discussion of the division of the

monochord A monochord, also known as sonometer (see below), is an ancient musical and scientific laboratory instrument, involving one (mono-) string ( chord). The term ''monochord'' is sometimes used as the class-name for any musical stringed instrument h ...

Guitar chords

Letter notation is the most common way of indicating chords for accompaniment, such as guitar chords, for example B⁷. The bass note may be specified after a /, for example C/G is a C major chord with a G bass. Where a capo is indicated, there is little standardisation. For example, after ''capo 3'', most music sheets will write A to indicate a C chord, that is, they give the chord ''shape'' rather than its pitch, but some specify it as C, others give two lines, either the C on top and the A on the bottom or vice versa. A few even use the /, writing C/A or A/C, but this notation is more commonly used for specifying a bass note and will confuse most guitarists.

Choice of note names

In the context of a piece of music, notes must be named for their

diatonic functionality In music, function (also referred to as harmonic function) is a term used to denote the relationship of a chord"Function", unsigned article, ''Grove Music Online'', . or a scale degree to a tonal centre. Two main theories of tonal functions exis ...

. For example, in the key of D major, it is not generally correct to specify G as a melodic note, although its pitch may be the same as F (in many tuning systems other than twelve tone equal temperament, the pitch of G is ''not'' the same as that of F). This is normally only an issue in describing the notes corresponding to the black keys of the piano; there is little temptation to write C as B although both may be valid names of the same note. Each is correct in its context. Note names are also used for specifying the natural scale of a

transposing instrument A transposing instrument is a musical instrument for which music notation is not written at concert pitch (concert pitch is the pitch on a non-transposing instrument such as the piano). For example, playing a written middle C on a transposing ...

such as a clarinet,

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

, or

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of Single-reed instrument, single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed (mouthpi ...

. The note names used are conventional, for example a clarinet is said to be in B, E, or A (the three most common registers), never in A, and D, and B (double-flat), while an alto flute is in G.

Octaves

Note names can also be qualified to indicate the octave in which they are sounded. There are several schemes for this, the most common being

scientific pitch notation Scientific pitch notation (SPN), also known as American standard pitch notation (ASPN) and international pitch notation (IPN), is a method of specifying musical pitch by combining a musical note name (with accidental if needed) and a number ide ...

. Scientific pitch notation is often used to specify the range of an instrument. Where sharps or flats are necessary for this, these are related to the natural scale of the instrument if it has one, otherwise the choice is arbitrary.

Other note naming schemes

* Tonic sol-fa is a type of notation using the initial letters of solfege. * Alpha is a chromatic extension of the letter notation proposed by the French musician Raphaël André.

References