The ‘abc’ notation system
Middle C (that’s button C3 on the press) is notated as C
The D immediately above middle C is notated as D
The E above that is notated as E
And so on up the scale.
Starting at middle C, the notes in that octave are shown as C D E F G A B
The next note up is a C again – but to show it is in the higher octave, that C is shown in lowercase as c
So a full one-octave C major scale from middle C is – C D E F G A B c
So going from middle C to the B one octave and 7 notes above that is – C D E F G A B c d e f g a b
And we’re back at yet another C note. The next octave up is shown by an apostrophe immediately after the note name, like – c’
So our scale now runs two octaves from middle C: C D E F G A B c d e f g a b c’
And using the apostrophe to denote the upper octave we can extend our scale further :
C D E F G A B c d e f g a b c’ d’ e’ f’ g’ a’ b’
But what about the B immediately below middle C ?
That octave is shown by a comma immediately following the note name, e.g. B,
We now have four octaves at our disposal, which is more than enough for our purposes of notating traditional music:
C, D, E, F, G ,A, B, C D E F G A B c d e f g a b c’ d’ e’ f’ g’ a’ b’
1 responses to “The ‘abc’ notation system”
Jan scofield
September 15th, 2013 at 11:45
Thanks for that clear explanation. I have met ABC notation in Ireland in a workshop but was kindly given the ‘dots’ for the tune. The only person who needed them1