/ Reference / MIDI Notes

MIDI 1.0 supports 128 note numbers representing pitches in a 12-tone, equal temperament system. ChucK supports the expression of MIDI notes as floating point values so you can express any frequency via a MIDI note number.

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.