Reading, Naming and Locating Pitch

This module builds the whole task every live coder and producer hits within their first week: turning a sound in your head — or in your headphones — into a written pitch you can name, place, and hand to a collaborator or a synth. In a live-coding rig, note "c4 e4 g4" and n(60) only work if you know what C4 is: which octave, which key, which frequency register, and how it would sit on a staff if a bandmate asked. Notation here is not conservatory formality; it is the shared address system between your ears, your keyboard, and your code.

The arc starts fully supported. You first anchor pitch as frequency — A4 = 440 Hz — and hear why octave doubling makes two notes feel like the same letter, using the octave-ratio and twelve-pitch-class atoms as just-in-time references while you walk a MIDI keyboard octave by octave. Next you drill the chromatic ladder: naming each semitone step up and down until adjacent-key naming is automatic (this and clef reading are the part-task drills — short, repeated, framed inside notating real fragments, never as flashcards alone). Then you practice respelling black keys both ways, guided by the enharmonic-equivalence atom, and read short figures off treble and bass staves anchored to Middle C.

The capstone strips the support away: a two-bar fragment, correct clef, every note labeled with pitch class and register, one enharmonic respelling marked, verified by playback. Each required atom gates a piece of that evidence — frequency and octave atoms gate the register labels, the chromatic and enharmonic atoms gate the naming, the clef atom gates the staff itself. The supporting atom on absolute versus relative pitch simply keeps your expectations honest: this module trains naming and reading, not perfect pitch.

Walkthrough

The staff-notation half of this skill is reference you look up ([[treble-bass-clef-notation]]); the half a live coder uses every session is hear it → name it → play it. We’ll do that half in strudel.cc (Ctrl-Enter play, Ctrl-. stop), where a named pitch and a played pitch are the same keystroke. Each step is a complete, playable program.

1 — a named pitch is an address. c4 is middle C — letter c, octave 4. Play it through a plain sine so there’s nothing to hide behind: one pure tone at one frequency ([[pitch-frequency-hz]]).

note("c4").sound("sine")

2 — the octave: same letter, different register. Same pitch class c at three octaves. Each step up doubles the frequency, which is why they sound like “the same note, higher” — the ear hears the letter, the number picks the register ([[octave-frequency-ratio]]).

note("c3 c4 c5").sound("sine")

3 — the chromatic ladder. Every adjacent key is one semitone. Walk five of them up from C — c c# d d# e — the smallest steps Western pitch names give you ([[chromatic-scale-semitones]]).

note("c4 c#4 d4 d#4 e4").sound("sine")

4 — enharmonics: one key, two names. d#4 and eb4 are the same black key — same sound, spelled two ways depending on context ([[enharmonic-equivalence]]). Play both after a C and hear that steps 2 and 3 here are identical:

note("c4 d#4 c4 eb4").sound("sine")

5 — names or numbers, and a fragment (the capstone). Strudel takes MIDI numbers too: 60 is c4, 64 is e4, 67 is g4 — handy when you think in intervals. Here’s a two-bar fragment mixing letters and a flat, which you can name back (C–Eb–F–G… a C-minor-ish line) and mark its one enharmonic (the eb4 could be spelled d#4):

note("c4 eb4 f4 g4 ~ ab4 g4 eb4").sound("sine")

What good sounds like. You should be able to name what you hear before you look: play the fragment, sing it back, and label each note’s letter + octave. If a note sounds “wrong,” it’s usually the wrong octave (register), not the wrong letter — the commonest beginner slip is c3 where you meant c4. Naming and playing are now one motion; the staff is just the written form of the same address. (Skill map: live-coder Domain B3 — naming pitch so it can go into code.)

Now make it yours. Transpose the fragment up an octave: c5 eb5 f5 …. Respell eb4 as d#4 — identical sound, different name. Rewrite the whole line in MIDI numbers (60 63 65 67 ~ 68 67 63) and confirm it matches. Swap sine for sawtooth to hear register on a richer tone.