Day 15: Advent Calendar

[Kathis]

Good morning Jellybeans. For those of the musically incline, will find today's puzzle super easy. But for those that didn't have the luxury of having a school that provided dedicated music classes (like myself), or just need a refresher. Then feel free to listen to the basic instructions. For those that are like confident and just need the puzzle instructions just jump to [the door] tag. This is mostly going to be a crash course.

 

Lesson 1: The basic notes

 

In Western Music the notes go from A to G, and repeats.  You may also know them as Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La , Ti/Si. In the named scale, it starts at C. Do = C. 

 

They are placed on lines that are called as the Staff.  There are 5 lines and 4 spaces to a staff.  The Clef (the symbol at the front) indicates the notes that the staff represent.  Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge  and F.A.C.E  are common mnemonics that are used to remember the notes for the Treble Clef (the one you are seeing in the images).  The Bass Clef (the ones that looks like a backwords C or a fancy D without it's back, starts at G, and it's mnemonic is Good Boys Do Fine Always, and for the spaces is All Cows Eat Grass. 

 

The range of the notes is known as an Octave, and this is used to determine the pitch. Middle C on a piano is the 4th octave, and it's pure note is called N60 in notation.  In the image above, it would be noted in an imaginary line below the E,  since the pattern continues, in Bass Clef it's in an imaginary line above the last A in the staff.

 

 

A special note is called a rest, they are when no noise is to be heard. See Lesson 4 for details. 

 

Lesson 2: Sharps and flats

 

Next we have Flats and Sharps, and natural.

 

These are in between notes.   A Sharp goes up, a flat goes down.   Sharps are indicated by a pound sign like such: C#;  flats are indicated by a smaller be like such: D♭. The notes I have chosen demonstrate in the written example are the same note, so for the codes I will only be worrying about the # variant, not the flat. Though the puzzles can deal with both.  Naturals would be as if the sharp or flat don't exist, they are used when Key signatures are used. See Lesson 3.  They are indicated as such C♮ (might be hard to see, sorry that's just the nature of it.)  for the codes you just need to indicate the note without any indication. 

 

Lesson 3:  Key Signatures

 

 

Some songs and music you may see have Flats and/or Sharps at the stop. this means for the song, every note on that line is to be treated as that sharp or flat. However for your purposes you will need to make the indication. 

 

Lesson 4: Measure and length (alt header: It's all about the rhythm)

 

 

A measure is between the two || (start of the song has an invisible one..) known as the bar.  

You will see 2 numbers at the start of the song.

The top number represents how many beats are between the measures. 

The bottom number tells you which note is your beat. 

Finally some songs will have a tempo, this tells you how many beats are made in a 60 second time frame, the named ones are a 'range'. I'll include the range if it's not provided. 

 

For the sake of the beat, assume that every song is a quarter.  C8 would be an eighth,  C1 would be a whole note

 

It should be noted that tied notes are notes that have a line that connects two notes together, their beat is held for the duration of both. In our notation we symbolize it with &  C1&B1  would in theory hold it for 8 beats.  (since most music is assumed to be a quarter note per beat.)

 

The stem of the note (the line) doesn't matter. It just points towards the middle of the staff for readability. 

 

Lastly you have the notes that are followed by a dot.   These just hold the note for a bit, just use a .   

 

[the door]

 

Hopefully you are all still with me, below are the instructions. 

 

• To represent Tempo use T followed by the bpm. (Omitting is assumed to be 120)
• To represent the Length of a beat, use L followed by the note value. (Omitting is assumed to be L4)
• To represent the Octave you would write O4 (O4 is the starting octave, and it starts at C and ends with B going up. Omitting is assumed to be the starting octave.). To shift an octave you can lower it by using > ; to raise it you use <. If you need to jump further (which you will not need to.) you could use O and a number. 
• To represent the notes.  A B C D E F G  ; Sharps are #
• To represent a Rest, you use R 
• To represent note length use the beat number. 1 being whole. 2 being half, 8 being eight. Omitting is assumed to be 4 / quarter.
• To represent tied notes, use &  between the two notes. 
• To represent lengthened notes, use .
• Start with the tempo if needed, Length. No spaces are required. 
• DO NOT USE N. It was more of a did you know in the lessons. 

 

 

Convert The song Silent Night into this musical notation, But to make sure you understand how, I want you to skip the first 2 measures, and start at Holy Night (or Start at Measure 3), Ending at the end of Measure 6.

 

Assume Tempo to be 120.

 

Good luck everyone.

 

 

[Kaeri]

I've been trial and erroring this multiple times and there has to be something i'm not understanding about the instructions.

 

From what i read in the instructions, don't include the tempo if it's 120, and don't include the length of a beat from the time signature if it's 4 (quarter). These are considered "defaults" so they can be omitted.

 

But then for the Octave, when you say "you would write O4" is this another instance of "if it is this default thing, omit it"? I've tried it both ways, but it makes more sense to assume O4 and just put the symbols for a higher or lower octave.

 

I hope it isn't bad to post a partial/wrong answer, but it's the quickest way to explain what i have so far...

Spoiler

G.A8GE2.<D2<DB2R

 

Also how to show a dotted quarter note? "4." or just "." since we don't need to specify when a note is a quarter note (omit because "default") but having just a dot would be a shorthand expression for dotted quarter.

I had another thought that when you talked about the octave shifting, maybe it was something that only had to be noted when it changed, like this:

Spoiler

O4G.A8GE2.<D2DO4B2R

 

[Kathis]

You are very close. Your octave shifts in your first one are wrong.  
While it's possible to get the proper song to play in the second one, it's sadly one of those things again where I have to come use a set in stone sort of answer. You do not need to declare the starting octave if it's 4. I've updated the instructions to reflect this. I have also increased the time.