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.
DI, REAMP AND PREAMP
three boxes on one ruler of levels — where each one leads from and to
DRUM KIT NOTATION
where every drum and cymbal sits on the staff — per the Percussive Arts Society standard
EQUAL TEMPERAMENT
how many cents each interval misses the pure one by, and why exactly that much
NOTES ON THE FRETBOARD
standard tuning E A D G B e · first twelve frets
THE PENTATONIC
three positions · the root is marked
STRING MATERIALS
what they are drawn from, how one wrap differs from another and what of that is audible
TONEWOODS
density, hardness, export · what is measured kept apart from what is taste
LOUDNESS ON DELIVERY
integrated loudness, true peak and the room between them — from the documents, not from hearsay
MICROPHONE TYPES
what picks the sound up and where it stays deaf — five patterns from one formula
INSTRUMENT FREQUENCIES
fundamentals and overtones · 20 Hz – 20 kHz, logarithmic scale
THE STEREO FIELD
what stays centred · what is spread · why the low end is not panned
MUSICAL DYNAMICS
the loudness marks from pp to ff, crescendo and diminuendo hairpins — and how the piano got its name