Note names around the world

C D E F G A B, do re mi, and the German H that is not a typo. Four naming systems for the same twelve notes, and why your tuner should speak yours.

July 29, 2026

The twelve notes are the same everywhere. What they are called is not, and which system you learned depends entirely on where you learned music.

TuneHaven ships four, all free, because a tuner that shows you names you do not use is adding a translation step to something that should be instant.

English letters

C D E F G A B, then back to C.

Standard in English-speaking countries and the default in most software. Sharps and flats are written with the letter plus a symbol: C#, Bb.

Fixed do solfège

do re mi fa sol la si, where do is always C.

Standard across the Romance-language world: Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and much of Latin America. If you learned music in Spanish, la is A at 440 Hz, permanently, and there is nothing relative about it.

This trips up English speakers who met solfège as a movable system, where do is whatever the tonic of the current key happens to be. Both exist, they are used by different traditions, and the fixed version is what a tuner needs, since a tuner has no idea what key you are in.

The seventh degree is si in most fixed-do countries, though some traditions use ti to keep the initial letters distinct.

German

C D E F G A H, and then B means B flat.

This is the one that looks like an error and is not. In German-speaking countries, and much of central and northern Europe, the note English calls B natural is written H, and the letter B is reserved for B flat.

It comes from medieval notation, where two forms of the note existed, a “soft” rounded b and a “hard” square b. The square form drifted into being written as an h in German manuscripts and the name stuck. It is why Bach could spell his own surname as a melody: B flat, A, C, B natural.

Sharps add -is and flats add -es, so C# is Cis and E flat is Es.

Indian sargam

Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni.

The system used across Indian classical music, both Hindustani and Carnatic. Like movable do, sargam is fundamentally relative: Sa is the tonic the performer chooses, and everything is heard in relation to it rather than pinned to an absolute frequency.

For tuning purposes the names are mapped to fixed pitches, which is a simplification of how the system actually works but is what makes it usable on a meter.

Changing it

Notation system is in the tuner settings, and it is in the free-forever list along with A4 calibration, temperaments and the meter styles. Switching it changes what the display reads everywhere in the app, including the courses and the reference tones.

The pitches never change. E2 is 82.41 Hz whether the screen calls it E, mi or E.