Talk:Scientific pitch notation

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[edit] Is 440Hz A4 or A3

Unfortunately, there is no universally-accepted standard associating a particular octave number with a specific frequency range. Is that true? ISTM that it completely defeats the purpose of the notation if so! Andrewa 16:10, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

See http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory1.htm for one definition that sets middle C as C4 and 440Hz as A4. That's the only usage I have previously encountered. But, according to the current article, Japanese midi specs may (interesting word) use C3 to mean middle C.

I feel a little like I have just heard a rumour that a friend has been executed. What right has anyone to redefine the notation in this way? What possible use could it have? Surely it just reflects a mistake on the part of the writers of these specs? But perhaps the situation is not as grave as the rumour.

Assuming it is true, it would mean that those following the Japanese midi convention were an octave out with everyone else. But would it mean that this then becomes an alternative scientific pitch notation in English? I'm skeptical. ISTM that, at worst, we now have two notations:

Scientific pitch notation (otherwise unqualified, in English) still means middle C is C4, 440 Hz is A4.

The midi specification uses C3 to mean middle C, A3 to mean 440 Hz. I originally was going to say Japanese midi specification but I'd like to avoid that phrasing if at all possible, and if the Japanese specs use this convention then my initial reaction is that the English specs should too.

Actually, just dreaming a little, if we do have the situation that scientific pitch notation in English puts A4=440Hz and the midi spec in Japanese puts A3=440Hz, then that would be one of the toughest translation decisions I've ever considered! In the fullness of time, one will hopefully change, with all that entails. (Not an inviting prospect.) But failing that, one will be abandoned and forgotten except by musical historians and the like. But which? And meantime, in the vernacular confusion seems inevitable. So what should the English midi specs say? Hmmmm.

Either way, I'd qualify it in the English specs. Specifications need to be specific.

I'm going to research this a little more before updating the article. Comments very welcome. Andrewa 16:51, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

From http://scientific-pitch-notation.brainsip.com/ :

Scientific Pitch Notation in music is a method of naming the notes of the standard western chromatic scale by appending a number identifying each octave, so that each note is unambiguously defined according to its fundamental frequency.

Example: A4 is the A above middle C, and has a fundamental frequency of 440.00 Hz.

Now, that article cites http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory1.htm#uspitch (as does the current Wikipedia article) so it's not an independent source. But I'm interested in the word unambiguously. I feel like saying Hear! Hear!.

But I recognise I need to take a step back here. I'm very tempted to advocate keeping scientific notation as it always was. I'm guessing by the current article that there are those who want to give the midi convention equal time.

Neither is acceptable in Wikipedia of course. We don't decide, we just describe. So the question is simply, what does scientific pitch notation mean? Not what it should mean, simply what it does mean. Hmmmm again. Andrewa 17:14, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Note also Middle C: In Western music, the expression "middle C" refers to the note "C" or "Do" located between the staves of the grand staff, quoted as C4 in note-octave notation (also known as scientific pitch notation).

I'm hardening a little. Andrewa 17:19, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I guess it's obvious, but this Google search might be useful. Andrewa 17:26, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

The claim that there is ambiguity was introduced by an anon with no other contributions. Might it even be a test or prank? But it's surprising that it has survived so many edits, including rephrasing of the claim itself. Hmmmm.

Curiouser and curiouser, the current article at Musical Instrument Digital Interface does not mention this alleged quirk of the MIDI specification, in fact it does not mention scientific pitch notation at all, either by name of by using note names such as C4. Rather, it describes notes as being expressed as a 7-bit unsigned integer 0-127, from C,,,, ... designated as MIDI note 0 to g''''' ... designated as MIDI note 127, so there they are using Helmholtz notation not scientific pitch notation. Still more hmmmm. Andrewa 11:05, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and scientific pitch notation does not assume equal temperament. The table that is part of the article does assume this, and the article on piano key frequencies does too. But, if for example you choose to tune an organ to mean tone tuning, middle C is still C4, and the A above it is still A4. It may not be A440 however (depending on exactly how you've chosen to implement your mean tones). Equal temperament is generally assumed by users of scientific pitch notation, but the notation itself doesn't assume it. Andrewa 11:13, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Action

Time to be bold. Removed text:

Unfortunately, there is no universally-accepted standard associating a particular octave number with a specific frequency range. For instance, Japanese MIDI specs and American MIDI specs may specify dissimilar ordinals for middle C (C3 vs. C4). In addition, this notation system assumes 12 tone equal temperament and does not specify that A above middle C must conform to ISO 16 frequency standard (440.00 Hz). In typical American usage, however, the ISO standard is taken for granted, and middle C is labeled "C4."

As explained above, I think these claims are quite simply false.

Also removed

For this reason, the notation C4b would be slightly more consistent, though significantly less legible.

as would be suggests to me that this is an original proposal. Assuming that it is, then it has no place in a Wikipedia article. Andrewa 11:05, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not to throw a wrench into the works, but ...

I've definitely read books in which "C5" was used to refer to middle C. Don't have any on hand at the moment, though I associate this with earlier English writing.

I've read books that said that the earth has existed for less than 10,000 years. But I don't propose to update the brontosaurus article based on these books.

Personally I consider "C4" to be the modern name for "middle C" and think there's a reasonable consensus around this terminology. However, some sort of warning might not be inappropriate: "Although most writers use C4 to refer to middle C, one occasionally finds variant systems in which middle C is referred to as C5 or C3." Tymoczko 04:26, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

No, if the article mentions them at all (and I think it probably should) it should state clearly that these are different systems of notation. They are not scientific pitch notation.

Update: a little Googling shows that there are definitely a lot of different conventions about octave numbers among software manufacturers--C3, C4, and C5 can each be used for middle C. Tymoczko 04:31, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Agree there are lots of different usages. Whether any of these should be called conventions is less clear. They only become conventions when they have some wider following than one software manufacturer, or even a group of software manufacturers who use a compatible notation for whatever reason.
If any of them do have this following, then each of these should each have their own article, describing not just what they call middle C but the whole system. There are many ways in which it could depart from this one, and I expect some of them do.
Thanks for the comments. I don't think they throw a wrench in the works at all. Andrewa 10:16, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I've expanded the introduction a little, both to mention these variant systems and to put the rather pedantic point made there about Cb into some sort of perspective. Andrewa 15:41, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Aha!

I think the ambiguity to which you refer may be due to using the terms scientific pitch notation and note-octave notation as synonyms, as the article itself did until a few minutes ago. What seems to be the case is that there are several systems of note-octave notation (probably owing to errors by the writers who proposed them, but that's another story) but only one of these is scientific pitch notation.

That's not to say that some writers may not claim to use scientific pitch notation, but get it wrong. We're all human, and like myths of extreme plutonium toxicity, once something is in the press then however ridiculous it is it will stay in the press. See Snopes. Andrewa 16:41, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other notation c' c etc.

In Netherlands I learned a different way of numbering the octaves, see Dutch wikipedia

  • C0-B0: C2-B2 (Sub-contra octave)
  • C1-B1: C1-B1 (Contra octave)
  • C2-B2: C-B (Great octave)
  • C3-B3: c-b (Small octave)
  • (C4-B4 in this article): c'--b' (one-primed octave)
  • every higher octave gets an additional prime: c, c' etc. (two-primed, etc.)

I know that the naming of notes in different languages is a horrible mess, but does the above convention have a name in English? —Preceding unsigned comment added by hankwang (talk • contribs)

OK, it was actually described under note, it's the "conventional octave naming system"... Han-Kwang 20:18, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

The system mentioned above is used not only in Netherlands but in a considerable part of Europe for instance in Germany, Scandinavia and eastern Europe. To make things even worse, a contra C at a pitch of about 32 Hz is sometimes noted 1C. This is the same tone as C1. One octave above we find C (great) or C2, then c (small) or C3. When we come to next c "the middle c" at about 256 Hz it is sometimes noted c1 in parts of Europe and C4 in english. The risk of confusion is obvious here so it is necessary to know which system is used. The english system is probably based on human ear where C0 at 16 Hz is barely audible. The central european system corresponds to the organ where the C (great) at 64 Hz or C2 is the lowest tone of the 8' stop. The 4' will start at C3 while the 32' actually goes down to C0 or 16 Hz.Phstrom 14:39, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

This is the Helmholtz system: also described here which should have it's own article, and be separated from here. Perhaps both articles could be developed together in a standard way as both are in common usage. –MDCollins (talk) 11:55, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Helmholtz pitch notation now created. Any views welcome. –MDCollins (talk) 00:37, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] If it's a problem, all b/# should be replaced by flat/sharp.

(Comment moved from Han-Kwang's talkpage)

I'd like that, too, but it doesn't show up in IE. — Omegatron 20:59, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to read this. Do you mean that ♭ (flat symbol, "b", & coding) and "♭" (flat symbol, direct UTF) and "♯" (sharp symbol, UTF) are all invisible in IE? In that case, all occurences should be replaced by the words "flat" or "sharp". I don't think a lowercase b is a suitable replacement for a flat symbol. Han-Kwang 21:05, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Huh. They used to be. But now that I try them they all show up fine (IE6). I don't know what determines whether they show up or not, then. If they are going to show up as a rectangle on the vast majority of readers' screens though, they are even less suitable than # and b. Otherwise I would prefer using the proper symbols. There is also the {{unicode}} template to consider, which supposedly fixes some such problems in IE. See Template_talk:Unicode#Discussion, [1], Talk:Accidental_(music)#Viewing_Problems — Omegatron 22:07, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
One could consider \flat and \sharp (LaTeX math mode) to render them as images. Han-Kwang 22:22, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

The accidentals aren’t showing up on my computer either. They appear as squares. I think that using ‘#’ as a symbol for sharp and ‘b’ for a flat is a lot better than seeing blank boxes. Either that or all of the accidental symbols need to be replaced with their respective terms (a.k.a flat, sharp, and natural, respectively). 15:32 11 April, 2007 Tophatpianist

[edit] sources?

I've tagged the definition with citation needed, being an agnostic with regard to 'Scientific' claims. Especially since note-octave notation has been merged here, we need to re-include the caveats of the first version of the article.

Anyone consulting this article (it links from {[Magic flute]] should be made aware that any writer serious about being precisely understood will define his/her system near the beginning of the book. It would be interesting to collect examples and see what regional/ national paterns might exist. Harvard gives both CCC, CC, C, c, c1, c2 and C2, C1, C, c, c1, c2 along with their prefered C1, C, c, c'. (btw, this 'English' system appears to have been introduced by Ellis' translation of Helmholtz; he notes that previous english writers used lines abouve and below letters). I first encountered something like the system being described in the article in a British book I've since forgotten, but it started from an 88 note keyboard A1, B1, C1, D1.; this is what my (Californian) piano tech. uses. For what it's worth, Sibelius software uses A0, B0 C1. Sparafucil 23:30, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] JASA reference

I came across this Wikipedia article, and I thought I might include the reference to the Acoustical Society of America, because this article had been tagged as requiring sources. The article was in fact a discussion of an informal convention used by someone else, but it defines C0 as 'a reference frequency of 16.35 cycles/sec., a frequency which is in the neighborhood of that producing the lowest pitch audible to the average ear'. At the time of me writing this, there is a public abstract of the report that I found here. I also added some clarification to the section about variant methods. I must confess I've not edited much on Wikipedia, so if I've got my formatting or maybe my etiquette wrong, do fix it or drop me a line :)Geraint 10:00, 5 September 2007 (UTC)