How Many Letters Are There In The Musical Alphabet?

Posted by Mike Schumacher

The musical alphabet is very much like the phonetic alphabet, with only one big difference: it does not include the letter O. That is, there are no songs that consist of nothing but repeated sounds of A, B, C, and so on.

However, the music theory vocabulary includes the term “octave” which refers to an interval that is one whole tone (or step) higher than another note. Therefore, the song “A Baby Makes Three” has three notes that go up an octave (one whole tone), making it one third longer than the original piece!

The other major type of repetition used in music is called a figure. A figure can be done either as part of a larger structure or by itself. For example, the first half of a bar could be considered a figure because it is separate from the second half.

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