Music note names: letters, syllables and why they disagree

The letter system runs A, B, C, D, E, F, G and starts again. The syllable system runs do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si. Line them up and C is do, D is re, E is mi, F is fa, G is sol, A is la, B is si.

That single row of equivalences solves most confusion. What it does not solve are three places where the systems genuinely differ, and each of them costs someone a wrong note.

Letters came first in written theory: medieval scribes labelled the notes of the scale with the first letters of the alphabet, and the practice survived unchanged in English and German usage. A is the reference pitch that orchestras tune to, which is why the alphabet starts there rather than at C.

That historical accident is the reason the letter series begins on A while the scale most people learn begins on C — the letters name pitches, not scale degrees.

The syllables come from an eleventh-century teaching trick: Guido of Arezzo took a hymn whose lines each began a step higher and named the notes after the first syllable of each line. Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la — later ut became do, and si was added for the seventh.

This is why the syllable names sound like fragments of Latin: they are. The system was built for singing, not for writing, and it still works better for the voice than letters do.

In German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian and Scandinavian usage the note English speakers call B is written H, and the letter B means B flat. A German score marked H major is what an English score calls B major.

The origin is a medieval copying habit: the lowered form of the note was written as a soft, round b and the natural form as a hard, square b, which drifted into the letter h. Bach's name spells a melody in this system — B flat, A, C, B natural — and that only works with the German letters.

If you play from imported editions, this is the single most useful thing on the page to remember.

In Italy, France, Spain and Russia do is a pitch: do is always C, whatever key the music is in. In much of English-language teaching do is a scale degree: do is the first note of whatever key you are in, so in G major do is G.

Two musicians can therefore both say do and mean different sounds. Neither is wrong — they are different tools. Fixed do names absolute pitch, movable do names function, and singers who learn movable do transpose more easily because the syllable follows the role, not the key.

The practical conversion is short enough to memorise: C do, D re, E mi, F fa, G sol, A la, B si — and in German scores, B si becomes H, while B means B flat.

Beyond that, sharps and flats carry their own suffixes: German adds -is for sharp and -es for flat, so C sharp is Cis and E flat is Es. Romance languages use words instead: do diesis, mi bemolle.

Names tell you which pitch; the symbol at the start of the staff decides where that pitch sits — see clefs. How long each note lasts is a separate matter: note values.