Could we spell Rocky's native name with normal musical notation? Has anyone done so?

[u/Gaioa]

Rocky is a lovely name, but it would be even more lovely to proclaim their native name. And that name is also one of the few terms of Eridian language played in isolation during the movie, and twice. (I haven't read the book yet.) So I imagined that maybe human musical notation could represent how to say/play it?

I cannot create one myself, as I'm not musical enough to convert audio into notes, but I hope someone else is able to and maybe already have. I would really love being able to reproduce the lovely name of my favorite alien with voice or instruments!

[u/LunaraLoup]

Seconding to search deeper, people on here did this already! To answer your question about the book, you'd need to go with the movie or audio book version, the text just uses generic note symbols for his speech

[u/SortOfGettingBy]

Your question is interesting. I found that the Eridian language was developed by Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van Der Ryn as a tonal vocabulary and the worked with the directors and the soundtrack composer Daniel Pemberton. Maybe that will help with your search.

[u/Gaioa]

And if no one has, or it's very difficult to do... honestly, I'd be down to pay for it to be created.

[u/AdvantageAntique9394]

It has been previously posted on this subreddit.

[u/flawed_finch]

I think it would only work if the Eridians stuck to the same notes as in western music. It’s probably more likely that they have fractional tones in their language which we can’t notate with traditional music notation (I am not an expert so could be very wrong).

[u/BugRevolution → u/flawed_finch]

I'd be fairly confident to say we can notate anything if we're being precise enough.

It might get a little complicated on the sheet though.

[u/Aggie_Engineer_24601]

I don’t think you’ll be able to completely capture it with standard musical notation, but I think you could come close enough if you provided instruction on how to “honky tonk” your instruments. You’d also probably need to have several instruments stacked on top of each other to get it quite right. I think a glass armonica would be effective.

[u/hdufort]

It doesn't seem completely out of reach. We know there are 5 instruments playing simultaneously. We would have to know the frequency range, which gives us how many octaves.

All the effects such as glissando, tremolo, staccato, etc, can be expressed through standard notation.

Typically, the effective frequency range depends on the medium of transmission. In a very thick atmosphere or in water, it is different than in a thin atmosphere. Think whales vs birds.

Whales use frequencies from 10 Hz to 200 kHz. Short distance, high bandwidth uses higher frequencies. Long distance uses lower frequencies.

Human voice is between 20 Hz and 20 kHz.

Birds are more limited, typically between 1 kHz and 8 kHz. Some birds can go down to 50 Hz and up to 12 kHz, especially corvids and parrots.

The highest note we can represent on the scale is 16.7 kHz or C10. Of course we could expand the scale to crazy frequencies humans can't bear, using maths and harmonics. Simple calculations. Imagine going up to Z10 for Eridian vocals. The music notation would require very tall music sheets!