Pitch conventions

Abjad follows the following pitch conventions.

Names

Abjad names pitches according to the LilyPond english.ly module.

Abjad names accidentals according to the table below.

accidental symbol
quarter sharp ‘qs’
quarter flat ‘qf’
sharp ‘s’
flat ‘f’
three-quarters sharp ‘tqs’
three-quarters flat ‘tqf’
double sharp ‘ss’
double flat ‘ff’

Numbers

Abjad sets middle C equal to 0. This follows the presentation of American pitch-class theory in, for example, [Morris1987] .

IRCAM / MIDI pitch numbers equal Abjad pitch numbers plus 60.

Octaves

Abjad represents octaves with both numbers and ticks.

Octave notation Tick notation
C7 c’‘’‘
C6 c’‘’
C5 c’‘
C4 c’
C3 c
C2 c,
C1 c,,

Abjad follows American usage and sets the octave of middle C equal to 4. usage.

Abjad uses ticks in LilyPond output only.

Accidental spelling

Abjad chooses between enharmonic spellings at pitch-initialization time according to the following table.

PC number Default spelling
0 C
1 C♯
2 D
3 E♭
4 E
5 F
6 F♯
7 G
8 G♭
9 A
10 B♭
11 B

For example:

abjad> t = Staff([Note(n, (1, 8)) for n in range(12)])
abjad> print t.format
\new Staff {
        c'8
        cs'8
        d'8
        ef'8
        e'8
        f'8
        fs'8
        g'8
        af'8
        a'8
        bf'8
        b'8
}

You can use pitchtools.make_sharp() and pitchtools.make_flat() to respell accidentals after initialization:

abjad> pitchtools.make_sharp(t)
abjad> print t.format
\new Staff {
        c'8
        cs'8
        d'8
        ds'8
        e'8
        f'8
        fs'8
        g'8
        gs'8
        a'8
        as'8
        b'8
}

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