Talk:Note
From Academic Kids
This needs a re-write. The picture is great, but:
- the notes A,B,C... are not seperated by tones.
- "rung" is ambigious. notes are placed across lines or in spaces.
- accidental signs change pitch, but accidental notes are those which have been modified by sings to be out of the scale of a piece. This definition becomes shaky in pieces that don't use the diatonic scale.
Part of the problem lies in that the terminology of the subject itself ambiguous. A note is a piece of sound, eg the C sharp key on my piano plays a note. On the page is printed a note, which is C sharp. These two uses of the word to me are different in some way which I can't yet qualify. A rough attempt:
- Generally: a single sound of constant pitch
- Musically: a pitch which has a name assigned to it. (eg C sharp; mi )
- Specifically: the event of a sound being played in a piece of music, or the symbol in printed music representing the sound to be played.
- I have the funny feeling I wrote the above, a long time ago. déjà écrit? -- Tarquin
Tarquin's bold moves on the tuning page inspired me to tackle this article. Here's what I deleted and why:
- A note in a piece of music either belongs to the scale of the music or is a whole number of octaves away from a note of the scale. It also has a name and a symbol in the notation of the music.
- I felt this was unecessarily complex and didn't really add any useful information.
- A
- tone
- B
- semitone
- C
- tone
- D
- tone
- E
- semitone
- F
- tone
- G
- tone
- A
- The tone is almost twice a semitone and in modern western music is exactly twice a semitone.
- A lot of this stuff is info that belongs on the Scale and Notation pages and is not relevant to an article on notes
- after the letter (e.g. C# or F#)
- this usage of sharp and flat nomenclature is really secondary and relates only to the verbal usage of speaking about notes. I replaced it with the common usage in notation.
- A given piece of music will define at it's beginning The set of accidentals used defines the key signature of their scale.
In Italian notation the notes of scales are given in terms of Do - Re - Mi - Fa - Sol - La - Si rather than C - D - E - F - G - A - B. These names follow the original names given by Guido d'Arezzo, who had taken them from the first syllabs of the first seven verses of a Gregorian Chant. "Do" replaced the originary "ut".
Gen Ita
C Do D Re E Mi F Fa G Sol A La B Si
- Again this is all key/scale/notation stuff that is duplicated (over and over again) elsewhere.
This article really needs to be integrated with quarter note, half note, etc., and probably also the sharp and flat articles. The stuff about score and staff really belongs somewhere else. There is already a solfege page, which could use some of the info scattered in this talk page and elsewhere. I want to start on this pretty soon, but we shgould really generate some ideas about what exactly belongs in the note article. Specifically, should sharps and flats be discussed here? If not, where should they go? -- Merphant
- This seems a logical place for sharps and flats. A "note" notates pitch and duration, and a flat or sharp is part of the indication of pitch. Whether it's noted in the key signature or nearby is simply "accidental". -- Someone else 02:10 Nov 3, 2002 (UTC)
In continental Europe (or parts thereof), the B is replaced by a H. This deserves a mention, by someone knowledgable of the subject. -- Egil 19:26 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)
- I think you pretty much said what needs to be said ;-) B flat is written B, B is H -- Tarquin 19:27 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)
- Does anybody know why this is, by the way? I looked in Grove the other day to find out, but it didn't explain it. I'm losing sleep over it. --Camembert
My Oxford Companion has plenty on this, but it'll take me a while to write up ... I'll try & work on it tonight - Tarquin 19:35 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)
- Excellent! I look forward to it. --Camembert
Done. And I forgot to put a source note in -- it's the Oxford Companion to Music, 10th ed, 1970. (which I bought for a quid in a library sale!) -- Tarquin 19:56 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)
- Marvellous. Thanks, tarq --Camembert
There's something wrong, here, but I'm not sure what. Which is B and which is H is more complicated than that, but I've never heard what the correct rule is. See, though, for example, Brahms' B-Flat Piano Concerto: In German, the key is given as "H-dur." --Clayton D. Jones 04:46, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Nice work, but it's very Western-centric. There are 24 note octaves and so-on. Indian, Arabic, etc. Anyone with an in-depth knowledge of non-Western music out there? --echidna 15:15, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
♯ and ♭ -- will these show on all platforms? -- Tarquin 10:16, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- Probably not on platforms where Unicode is not supported; there should be something like alt text for Unicode characters..... Dysprosia 10:20, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- Neither characters show on Windows 5.1 XP Professional, IE6 4.65.244.206 08:03, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Individual articles for notes
Maybe this would be a little overkill, but how about a group of articles, one for each musical note? (E.G. an article about A, an article about B flat, etc.) The articles would contain facts about each note, similar to the group of articles about numbers. For example:
- A is the standard tuning pitch (440 Hz).
- B flat is one of the common trumpet pitches.
- F is the most common car horn pitch.
- I dunno... it doesn't seem to me that there would be enough to write about each note to justify giving each one its own article. Such facts could probably be presented in a list here at note. --bdesham 04:31, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Note name
The phrase "note name" is used in two senses in this article: the letter name and the duration. I propose that the the term "note value" is the standard term encompassing quarter notes, eighth notes, and so on.
Speaking of which, the table of note values could be expanded with small graphics of each one. I'd be happy to do that. --Wahoofive 04:46, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- Sounds good. Hyacinth 05:33, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Staff position
I notice there is no page for "staff position" and no entry (including this one) refers significantly to the lines and spaces of the staff as determinants of the name of the note. Notes can't be placed just anywhere on the staff but must be on a line or space (or ledger line). Is this a policy decision? --Wahoofive 04:46, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
