MIDI 1.0 supports 128 note numbers representing pitches in a 12-tone, equal temperament system.
Since it's hard to remember the association between a note number and its name
its common to accept a human-readable name of the form: note(accidental)octave
:
eg. C3
, F#5
.
There are multiple conventions for converting between note names and pitches.
Here we enumerate the C4
octave convention wherein C4 is Middle-C (which is always
MIDI note 60
). Note that the C4 convention is the one employed by
Scientific Pitch Notation.
Keep in mind that your favorite DAW may employ a different convention from C4
.
Also note that some musical instruments notate music according to
a standard for transposing notes
to better fit on a musical staff.
Octave | C | C#/Db | D | D#/Eb | E | F | F#/Gb | G | G#/Ab | A | A#/Bb | B |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
-1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
0 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
1 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
2 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 |
3 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 |
4 | 60 |
61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 |
5 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 |
6 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 |
7 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 |
8 | 108 | 109 | 110 | 111 | 112 | 113 | 114 | 115 | 116 | 117 | 118 | 119 |
9 | 120 | 121 | 122 | 123 | 124 | 125 | 126 | 127 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |