# In music B# = C instead of Cb? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 10, 2009, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986 "2009-08-10T21:53:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bisected8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a4c791/32.png) [@Bisected8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bisected8)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/1 "2009-08-10T21:53:19Z")
I’ve been learning how to play an Ocarina, and I tried to read some music, but got confused when I couldn’t find certain notes in the instruction pamphlet that came with the instrument (more specifically an A_b_). After consulting my more musically inclined younger sibling (my brother’s played the guitar since about the age of 10) he explained that the # of one note is equal to the _b_ of another (from A to G with a G# being the same as A_b_). He then proceeded to explain there were two exceptions; [ol] [li]B and C have not intermediary notes. A B# is equivalent to a C and a C_b_ is equivalent to a B.[/li][li]Germany also has an “H” note that comes after G.[/li][/ol] He couldn’t give me any explanation for this beyond “That’s how it is”. Can anyone offer me a better explanation? ---
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/2 "2009-08-10T22:04:33Z")
> [@Bisected8](#): > > I’ve been learning how to play an Ocarina, and I tried to read some music, but got confused when I couldn’t find certain notes in the instruction pamphlet that came with the instrument (more specifically an A_b_). After consulting my more musically inclined younger sibling (my brother’s played the guitar since about the age of 10) he explained that the # of one note is equal to the _b_ of another (from A to G with a G# being the same as A_b_). He then proceeded to explain there were two exceptions; > [ol] > [li]B and C have not intermediary notes. A B# is equivalent to a C and a C_b_ is equivalent to a B.[/li][li]Germany also has an “H” note that comes after G.[/li][/ol] > He couldn’t give me any explanation for this beyond “That’s how it is”. Can anyone offer me a better explanation? IIRC it goes back to the periodic table of the elements and the love of the number 8. They wanted to have “octaves” so they would imitate the nice order of the chart. As you may have noticed, E to F is half a step as well. Very technically speaking, A flat and G sharp aren’t _exactly_ the same…but for your purposes, they are. I’ve never heard of “H.” ETA Wikipedia had this: _English chemist John Newlands published a series of papers in 1864 and 1865 that described his attempt at classifying the elements: When listed in order of increasing atomic weight, similar physical and chemical properties recurred at intervals of eight, which he likened to the octaves of music.[5][6] This law of octaves, however, was ridiculed by his contemporaries.[7]_ > **[Periodic table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table)** > > The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of the elements, is an ordered arrangement of the chemical elements into rows ("periods") and columns ("groups"). An icon of chemistry, the periodic table is widely used in physics and other sciences. It is a depiction of the periodic law, which states that when the elements are arranged in order of their atomic numbers an approximate recurrence of their properties is evident. The table is divided into four roughly rectangular areas called... ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/3 "2009-08-10T22:19:44Z")
Look at a piano keyboard. The “regular” notes are the white keys; the sharps and flats are the black keys between them. You’ll notice that there’s no black key between B and C, or between E and F. If all the white keys had black keys between them, pianists would never be able to find their notes. Forget about the “H”. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/4 "2009-08-10T22:28:34Z")
Your life as a musician will be much sweeter if you learn, understand, and memorize the chromatic scale. From there it will almost certainly be helpful to likewise learn major (and then minor) scales in the keys you play in. A [piano keyboard](http://tlt.its.psu.edu/mto/music/keyboard.gif) offers a nice visual of the chromatic scale, and can be particularly helpful in seeing that there is no “sharp of one/flat of another” note (i.e., a black piano key) between B & C, nor between E & F. Since in a basic sense “X#” is defined as _WHATEVER_ note is one half step higher in pitch than “X,” it is consistent that G#=Ab, and B#=C. Usually, it is not helpful to refer to the latter note as B# and it is simply called C. German notation does use the letter H, but it’s not (immediately) after G – it’s the German equivalent of B. Hence German musical notation uses AHCDEFG where English notation uses ABCDEFG. Given that you were not told of there being no note between E & F, and you were told wrong about H (which you don’t need to know at all unless you’re reading German music), I would suggest you find a more accurate and reliable source for music theory information. ---
**Author:** ![Punoqllads](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d2c977/32.png) [@Punoqllads](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Punoqllads)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/5 "2009-08-10T22:29:32Z")
The Western scale has 7 different notes and 12 different tones. While the exact ratio between any two tones has been fiddled with over the years, the idea of having 7 notes and 12 tones goes back at least as far as the [Ancient Greeks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatonic_scale). ---
**Author:** ![zombywoof](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/9e8a1a/32.png) [@zombywoof](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zombywoof)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/6 "2009-08-10T22:32:49Z")
You might find [this site](http://www.musictheory.net/) helpful for learning the basics of music theory. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/7 "2009-08-10T22:39:20Z")
Sorry, forgot this: as to _WHY_ there is no note between B & C, nor between E & F, research the history of musical scales and keyboards. It is somewhat arbitrary and anchored in tradition, and you may find the explanation is not much better than “that’s how it is.” Nevertheless, [here’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_keyboard) on article to get you started. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/8 "2009-08-10T22:49:56Z")
> [@Gary\_T](#): > > German notation does use the letter H, but it’s not (immediately) after G – it’s the German equivalent of B. Hence German musical notation uses AHCDEFG where English notation uses ABCDEFG. And to further confuse things, in the German naming system, B is B-flat. ---
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/9 "2009-08-10T23:01:20Z")
One other thing that may help…if you know the song “Do-re-mi” from “The Sound of Music,” that’s a major scale. If the key is C, then Do=C, Re=D, Mi=E, Fa=F, Sol=G, La=A, Ti=B…and that brings us back to Do (C). On the other hand, if you were in the key of A, the notes would be Do=A, Re=B, Mi=C# (followed by D, E, F#, G#, A.) My hunch is that the C major scale is the reason E/F and B/C are the half steps. The C major scale has no sharps or flats. To name the notes of the scale, you can use just a letter (C is the only major scale for which this is true) but the half step intervals of the scale hit at E/F and B/C. The in-between steps for Do-Re-Mi etc. exist as well. > **[Solfège](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solf%C3%A8ge)** > > In music, solfège (/ˈsɒlfɛʒ/, French: \[sɔlfɛʒ\]) or solfeggio (/sɒlˈfɛdʒioʊ/; Italian: \[solˈfeddʒo\]), also called sol-fa, solfa, solfeo, among many names, is a music education method used to teach aural skills, pitch and sight-reading of Western music. Solfège is a form of solmization, though the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. > Syllables are assigned to the notes of the scale and enable the musician to audiate, or mentally hear, the pitches of a piece of music being seen for the f... @ **pulykamell** : Here, when the director’s baton his bottom, we say that’s beat “one.” My high school band director said that when the Italians play, the director’s baton his the top of its arc, and they call that beat “one.” :smack: ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/10 "2009-08-10T23:12:42Z")
> [@lobotomyboy63](#): > > @ **pulykamell** : Here, when the director’s baton his bottom, we say that’s beat “one.” My high school band director said that when the Italians play, the director’s baton his the top of its arc, and they call that beat “one.” :smack: Do you mean they direct differently, or that they number the beats 2341? The latter seems quite strange. ---
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/11 "2009-08-10T23:20:02Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Do you mean they direct differently, or that they number the beats 2341? The latter seems quite strange. From what he said, I gather the pattern of the baton is the same. Here, when the baton hits the bottom, that’s “one.” There, at the top, it’s “one” (here, in 4/4 time, it would be “four” or maybe “the ‘and’ of for”). ---
**Author:** ![cwthree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de0a6/32.png) [@cwthree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cwthree)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/12 "2009-08-11T00:53:29Z")
> [@Gary\_T](#): > > Since in a basic sense “X#” is defined as _WHATEVER_ note is one half step higher in pitch than “X,” it is consistent that G#=Ab, and B#=C. Usually, it is not helpful to refer to the latter note as B# and it is simply called C. It becomes helpful in college-level music theory. Until then, not so much. Seriously, if you have to analyze music in some of the weirder (that’s the technical term 😉 ) keys, it becomes important to understand the functional difference between B# and C (not to mention the difference between G# and Ab). You probably aren’t going to run into this playing the ocarina. _-cwthree, who survived 5 semesters of college-level music theory and now works with computers all day instead._ ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/13 "2009-08-11T01:41:11Z")
Depends on whether it is the ocarina of time or not… ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/14 "2009-08-11T02:03:10Z")
> [@lobotomyboy63](#): > > IIRC it goes back to the periodic table of the elements and the love of the number 8. They wanted to have “octaves” so they would imitate the nice order of the chart. As you may have noticed, E to F is half a step as well. > > …snip … > > ETA Wikipedia had this: > > _English chemist John Newlands published a series of papers in 1864 and 1865 that described his attempt at classifying the elements: When listed in order of increasing atomic weight, similar physical and chemical properties recurred at intervals of eight, which he likened to the octaves of music.[5][6] This law of octaves, however, was ridiculed by his contemporaries.[7]_ > > [Periodic table - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table) It does not “go back” to this. The musical scale is a **lot** older than Newlands’ chemical “law of octaves.” The diatonic musical scale, which is think what people are talking about, and the idea that there are eight notes in the scale (an octave) goes back at least to ancient Greece, I believe, long before anyone knew anything about chemical elements in the modern sense. Newlands simply drew a (rough) analogy from the well known octave structure of music to the pattern he saw in the chemical elements that were known in his time: if you arranged the elements in order of increasing atomic weight, every eighth element had similar chemical properties to the one 8 before, just as, say _fah_ in one octave is in some sense the “same” note as the _fah_ in the octave above. (I think it is double the frequency, but I should leave it to someone who understands music a lot better than me to explain in what sense the notes are “the same” - I am here for the historical chemistry.) Newlands’ law of octaves was a sort of early stab at the idea of the Periodic Table, but the influence (in this case, anyway) was all from music to chemistry, and not from chemistry to music at all. Furthermore, I do not think the analogy was even all that close: that is, there was nothing in Newlands’ chemical pattern to parallel the pattern of tone and semitone intervals in a musical scale, there was just the _eightness_. ---
**Author:** ![EdwardLost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bbe5ce/32.png) [@EdwardLost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwardLost)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/15 "2009-08-11T04:04:49Z")
In case this helps: The octave has long been divided (in the West) into twelve half-tones, but the spacings between notes have have varied. Two goals to shoot for: (1) being able to change keys on a keyboard (by transposing the notes up or down one or more steps) and (2) having many of the notes sound good when played together. Unfortunately these goal conflict. Goal (1) can only happen when all adjacent notes have the same interval - specifically, a ratio of the 12th root of 2. Goal (2) is achieved when the wavelength ratios are fractions of small intervals (one third, two-thirds, three-fourths, etc.) The first is called “equal temperament” tuning; the later is “true” tuning. Keyboards are tuned to equal temperament because there is no way to tune them on the fly. Thus on a keyboard A#=Bb, C#=Db, D#=Eb, etc. regardless of key. On other instruments, like the violin, the player can adjust the note frequencies on the fly so they can be played with true intervals for a sweeter sound. But this means that you might play the “same” note higher or lower depending on the context of other notes in the chord. In notation you can express the lower version as, say, C# and the higher as Db. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/16 "2009-08-11T05:15:39Z")
> [@lobotomyboy63](#): > > My high school band director said that when the Italians play, the director’s baton his the top of its arc, and they call that beat “one.” :smack: That’s the way my High School orchestra teacher, who was Italian, directed. The baton pointed up on the beat. He said it was to make sure everyone could see it. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/17 "2009-08-11T07:04:17Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > And to further confuse things, in the German naming system, B is B-flat. But only in the name of the notes, right? Because if you mean the actual note itself, then I’ve been playing some of my favorite guitar pieces wrong for years. (Just kidding, actually. I know I’m on firm ground from a recording of one of them.) ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/18 "2009-08-11T09:04:20Z")
I suppose the question might be, if we start with the 12-tone octave, how come we don’t divide into something neat and tidy, like six steps called A, B, C, D, E, F, with a sharp or flat between each of them? Instead, we use a seven-note scale in Western music, and five-note scales have been very widely used too. Since it’s impossible to space seven or five notes evenly over the course of twelve tones, we have uneven gaps here and there, such as between B and C in the seven-note scale. The answer is that if you consider which tones in the 12-tone octave sound good relative to the root note, i.e. those tones whose frequency is in a simple ratio to the root, they are not spaced out evenly themselves. If you divided the octave into six equal steps, you’d miss some really important ones such as the 3/2 ratio (the perfect fifth) and the 4/3 (the perfect fourth), and instead you’d have a rather dissonant sounding scale. Essentially, if you want to have a scale with no more than two semitones between each note, and you also want to include the perfect fifth and fourth (or at least get very close, as in equal temperament), you can’t avoid having a missing sharp or flat somewhere, because the root and both the fifth and fourth are an odd number of semitones apart. As for why we divide the octave into twelve tones and not some other number, there’s a great explanation at [Twelve-Tone Musical Scale](http://thinkzone.wlonk.com/Music/12Tone.htm) . ---
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/19 "2009-08-11T10:24:38Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > It does not “go back” to this. The musical scale is a **lot** older than Newlands’ chemical “law of octaves.” The diatonic musical scale, which is think what people are talking about, and the idea that there are eight notes in the scale (an octave) goes back at least to ancient Greece, I believe, long before anyone knew anything about chemical elements in the modern sense. I knew there was a connection between the two. I got the direction wrong; thanks for fighting my ignorance. > [@panache45](#): > > That’s the way my High School orchestra teacher, who was Italian, directed. The baton pointed up on the beat. He said it was to make sure everyone could see it. That blows my mind. Does it look wrong now when you see an orchestra starting on the downbeat? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986/20 "2009-08-11T12:25:04Z")
When the full chromatic scale is defined mathematically in terms of fractions of the starting note, technically when you’ve gone an octave it would be something like 63/64 of the original note, and they fudge it to come out even. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-music-b-c-instead-of-cb/505986.md?page=2)