Notes in Music

 When we see music as a language it is easy to realize that the notes in music are

like the alphabet of a language. The notes are simply the foundation of all music.

There are only 12 notes in Western music, which is historically derived from the

European music and is by far the most common music system that we hear

today. There are other music “systems” out there, like Indian, African, Chinese

and other traditional folk music, which are all different and make use of different

scales.

The 12 notes in Western music are as follows:

A, A# or Bb, B, C, C# or Db, D, D# or Eb, E, F, F# or Gb, G, G# or Ab

Here are those notes laid out on a piano keyboard:

Figure 1: Notes in one octave on piano

There are a couple of things to note here.

1. The notes are named after the first 7 letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F, G.

2. There are also 5 notes lying between those: A#/Bb, C#/Db, D#/Eb, F#/Gb, G#/Ab,

that are named with sharps (‘#’ symbol), which indicate that a note is raised, and flats

(‘b’ symbol) which indicate that a note is lowered.

In this system, the sharp of one note is harmonically identical — also called

enharmonically equivalent — to the flat of the note above it. In other words, A# is

exactly the same tone as Bb, C# is the same tone as Db, D# as Eb, etc.

3. There are no sharps or flats between B and C or between E and F. That’s just one

fundamental characteristic of the music system that we use today.

4. The notes that don’t have any sharps or flats — all white keys on piano keyboard —

are called Natural notes. The black keys on piano keyboard are always the notes

with sharps or flats.

5. The distance between any two of these 12 notes that are next to each other is called a

half-step (H), and each half-step is the same distance (for example the distance

between Bb and B is the same as the distance between E and F). The distance

comprising two half-steps, which is the distance between, for instance, C and D, is

called a whole step (W).

In previous section it was mentioned that the term ‘tone’ is sometimes used as a

name for a particular music interval. This is that case—oftentimes the term

semitone (S) is used instead of the half-step, and tone (T) instead of the whole

step. These are just different names for the same thing. Half-steps or semitones

are equal to the distance from one piano key to the next, or one fret on guitar to

the next (which is why there are 12 keys or 12 frets per octave on those

instruments).

The Note Circle

The note circle shows all 12 notes that exist in Western music.

Figure 2: The foundation of music

Whenever you’re moving clockwise on the note circle (from left to right on

piano keyboard), you are ascending and the notes are becoming higher in pitch.

That’s the situation in which we would use ‘#’ symbol; for example, we would

use C# instead of Db to indicate that we’re ascending.

On the opposite, whenever you’re moving counter-clockwise (from right to left

on piano) the notes are becoming lower in pitch and hence we would use ‘b’

symbol — Db instead of C#, to indicate that we’re descending.