Sound symbol

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Tone symbols are used to denote and name pitches in a musical context.

While physics describes pitches as frequencies in the unit Hertz , i.e. as the number of vibrations per second, music uses letters, syllables, special characters and graphic symbols to identify a certain selection of pitches from the frequency spectrum.

German tone names

In the course of music history, the use of the letters a, h, c, d, e, f and g for the seven main tones (and one of their chromatic relatives) has become common in German usage . Alterations of the base tones are indicated by adding the syllables “-is” for high alteration or “-es” for lower alteration . An unsystematic, historically determined exception is the low alteration of the tone “h”, which is not called “hes” but “b”. However, the “h” with double subscripts means “heses”, not “bes”.

There is disagreement on the question of whether the individual tone designation should be written in upper or lower case in German. The Duden and other dictionaries allow both spellings. From a linguistic and orthographic point of view, these are nouns ( the F sharp, even if the article is not included), which would speak for the capitalization. The tones are also capitalized in English (see below). However, lower case letters are very often found in German-language specialist literature.

The tone designation alone (e.g. c) does not provide any information about the absolute pitch, as this depends on the octave space in which the tone is located and the tuning used . There is therefore a spelling that goes back to Hermann von Helmholtz , which characterizes the octave space with upper or lower case as well as by appending indices, apostrophes or subscripts or dashes (the table gives the lowest note of the octave space):

Octave designation Index notation Apostrophe spelling Dash spelling scientific notation IT-compatible spelling
Sub-sub-octave C 3 or 3 C ‚‚ ‚C or CCCC C −1 C − 1
Subcontra octave C 2 or 2 C ‚‚ C or CCC C 0 C0
Contra-octave C 1 or 1 C ‚C or CC C 1 C1
Great octave C. C. C 2 C2
Small octave c or c 0 c C 3 C3
Dashed octave c 1 c ′ C 4 C4
Two-stroke octave c 2 c ′ ′ C 5 C5
Three-stroke octave c 3 c ′ ′ ′ C 6 C6
Four-stroke octave c 4 c ′ ′ ′ ′ C 7 C7
Five-stroke octave c 5 c ′ ′ ′ ′ ′ C 8 C8
Six-stroke octave c 6 c ′ ′ ′ ′ ′ ′ C 9 C9
Seven-dashed octave c 7 c ′ ′ ′ ′ ′ ′ ′ C 10 C10

With the tones from the sub-sub-contra-octave to the seven-stroke octave, the entire human hearing range is covered. The infrasound range begins in the sub-sub-contra -octave and the ultrasound range begins in the seven-dashed octave .

The scientific and computerized notation for tones below the subcontractive octave are not very common. These tones can hardly be used musically, and numbers with a negative sign would have to be used for tones in the sub-contra-octave and even lower tones.

Tone names in other languages

In the Anglo-American language area, the root tones are C, D, E, F, G, A, B. The tone designated with "h" in German is called "B" there. The alterations are formed by adding “sharp” and “flat”; z. B. “C sharp” denotes the c sharp. The German tone "b" is called "B flat" in English. In Dutch, the German "h" is "b", the German "b" is "bes".

In the Romance and East Slavic language areas, the solmization syllables ut (or do), re, mi, fa, sol, la and si have been used to name the root tones.

Musical notation

A graphical form of symbolic description of pitches and durations as well as other musical parameter is the musical notation .

Musical motifs made from tone letters

German-language tone designations offer numerous possibilities to form words, names and abbreviations that can be used as musical motifs . The most used is BACH , which was used several times by Johann Sebastian Bach himself and was set to music by many composers after Bach as an homage to him.

Further:

literature