Charts for a music room
A music room wall is the one place a reference genuinely gets used, because the alternative is putting the instrument down. Everything here is arranged for that: read from two metres, answered in a glance, no interruption.
Theory on one side — the circle of fifths, note values, intervals. The instrument on the other — the fretboard, the keyboard, first chords for guitar and ukulele, the pentatonic box, scale fingering, and the alternate tunings. For a room that records as well as practises, the two mixing sheets: what lives where in the spectrum, and where things sit across the stereo field.
A3 is the sensible default here. A4 only if it hangs within reach of the stool.
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
THE SEVEN MUSICAL MODES
the same white keys · a different root
NOTE FREQUENCIES
the fundamental of every note in hertz · equal temperament, A = 440 Hz
NOTE VALUES
from whole to thirty-second · how many fit a 4/4 bar
C MAJOR FINGERING
right and left · one octave and two
B FLAT MAJOR FINGERING
right and left · one octave and two · two flats · B flat and E flat
D MAJOR FINGERING
right and left · one octave and two · two sharps · F sharp and C sharp
F MAJOR FINGERING
right and left · one octave and two · one flat · B flat
G MAJOR FINGERING
right and left · one octave and two · one sharp · F sharp
THE KEYBOARD
three octaves · every key and its note on the staff
SAMPLE RATES
what band each one describes, how much it leaves the filter, and what a minute weighs
SNARE DRUM RUDIMENTS
the forty international rudiments of the PAS · four families · the Standard 26 marked
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
UKULELE CHORDS
the first twelve chords · standard tuning G C E A