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.