 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: John Stackpole
Date: 2004-11-21 12:33
If I had paid proper attention back (waaaay back) in High School I might know the answer, but...
To the right of the blue headline "The Clarinet BBoard" on this page is a little G-clef with a C note and a red "C4".
What's the "C4" mean?
JDS
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Author: Stepan
Date: 2004-11-21 12:40
C is because it is C.
4? The highest note in my fingering chart is a3. Someone may even reach c4? It might be some clarinet Mt. Everest.
I really do not know.
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Author: John Stackpole
Date: 2004-11-21 13:59
Answering my own question (I think)..
C4 simply mean the 4th C-note up from the bottom on a standard piano.
Its just an alternate music notation.
Did I get it right?
JDS
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2004-11-21 14:22
John, you're right - C4 is middle C (the 4th C) on a full size (88 key) piano keyboard.
The reason it's on the page is because the notation used for basing clarinet (and other instruments) notes varies; some use the piano reference (where a written middle C is referred to as C4) and some use a reference based on the lowest note on the instrument (the 1st C encountered would be C1). On the BBoard when people want to refer to the different notes unambigously, we use the piano middle C as our reference.
There's always argument over which is better; IMO it doesn't matter as long as we're speaking the same "language" and I picked the C4 as the reference.
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2004-11-21 15:22
Yes, TKS to Mark C, for bringing a bit of order out of chaos ! Quite a few of us date far enough back [in BBoard communications] to remember some confused/confusing discussions we have had with this particular terminology. IMHO, nearly every author of technical writings has problems with terms/definitions etc. Al Rice's recent book "The Clarinet In The Classical Period" devotes the first 6 pages to "Abbreviations, Conventions, Notes to Readers and Musical Notation" as I'm quite sure all of our other "good books" do in their own way. In my engineering, chemical, patent career, this has been a seemingly never-ending struggle in trying to define what we are talking about. Got wordy again, didn't I, GBK/M C. If this just opens a larger "can of worms" , please squelch. Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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The Clarinet Pages
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