Reference charts
A reference sheet promises completeness within its subject. Every letter, every status code, every prefix, every phase — not a selection of the handy ones. That promise is what makes it worth wall space: you can stop wondering whether the answer is on there.
It is the largest kind in the catalogue and it runs across most of the subjects — alphabets and codes, the geography of instruments, the tea and coffee sheets, units and paper formats, the planets and the Moon.
Because they are dense, they reward the larger print. A3 is usually the right call for anything read from more than a metre away.
CIRCLE OF FIFTHS
12 keys · key signatures · relative minors
NOTES ON THE FRETBOARD
standard tuning E A D G B e · first twelve frets
THE PENTATONIC
three positions · the root is marked
TONEWOODS
density, hardness, export · what is measured kept apart from what is taste
THE STEREO FIELD
what stays centred · what is spread · why the low end is not panned
NOTE VALUES
from whole to thirty-second · how many fit a 4/4 bar
C MAJOR FINGERING
right and left · one octave and two
THE KEYBOARD
three octaves · every key and its note on the staff
DADGAD
D — A — D — G — A — D
DROP D
one string down · everything else unchanged
HALF STEP DOWN
every string down a semitone · same shapes
OPEN C
the deepest of the open tunings
OPEN D
the open strings are already D major
OPEN G
the open strings are already G major
MAMMALS IN TIME
from the first synapsid to us · 320 million years on one axis
VERTEBRATES IN TIME
when each group appeared · five hundred million years on one axis
BASIC PHYSICS FORMULAS
fifteen formulas · every letter explained beneath it
ANIMALS
the main branches — from comb jellies to chordates · who is actually related to whom
THE TREE OF LIFE
who sits inside whom · where animals, fungi and plants actually are
VERTEBRATES
from lamprey to bird · and why "fish" and "reptiles" are not groups
MORSE CODE
26 letters and 10 digits · dot, dash
PHONETIC ALPHABET
the ICAO standard · for radio and telephone
THE BASKETBALL
four FIBA sizes with their circumference and mass — and why the rules set a bounce, not a pressure
FOOTBALL: THE BALL
Law 2, three codes of the game, five sizes and three FIFA quality marks — what a ball must survive