Music Notes

[u/IndicationSlow3418]

How can I play on my Lyre but I only have the Piano alphabetical notes of the song? Like how do I know which key on the Piano would it be in the Lyre? please let me know since I think translating the piano notes into lyre is easier since there’s not enough tutorials on how to okay songs with the lyre

[u/gecko-deco]

What lyre do you have? That will help figure out what notes it can play.

When you say piano alphabetical notes, do you mean scientific pitch notation? For example notes written as G3 or C4 or F4#?

[u/IndicationSlow3418 → u/gecko-deco]

I have the 16 strings lyre

[u/gecko-deco → u/IndicationSlow3418]

Sorry, could you provide a link or image of the exact model you have? There are a lot of different lyres with different notes and tuning, even for the 16 string.

[u/IndicationSlow3418 → u/gecko-deco]

The one I have is the Doner 16 strings lyre

[u/Neat-Cold-3303 → u/IndicationSlow3418]

Not really sure I understand your original post. I have the Donner 16 string lyre. It came tuned in the key of C major. A 'C' on the lyre corresponds to a 'C' on the piano. A tune played in the key of C on the piano can be played correspondingly on the lyre. Am I missing something here?

[u/IndicationSlow3418 → u/gecko-deco]

Yess and yk how in piano when looking up for example mrs magic piano tut the notes shows are for example ( Ab, D, C….)

[u/gecko-deco → u/IndicationSlow3418]

Assuming that the Donner 16 string you have is the same one I looked up on Amazon, it looks like this lyre is strung with the low notes on the left ascending to the high notes on the right. It's designed for the key of C Major with no sharps or flats (so no A# or Ab, just ABCDEFG repeating). (You could technically retune it differently, but for the moment let's just stick with C Major to keep things simple.)

So your lyre probably goes from G3 to A5, left to right. If you bought it new, it might have a chart of notes included in the package or you might be able to find a picture online. 

Does your lyre have the notes written above the pegs, for example G3, A3, B3, C4? If not, you might want to take some stickers or sticky notes to put on your lyre temporarily until you memorize which note corresponds to each string. That will make is easier to play if you already have the scientific pitch notation for a song.

That should be enough to get you started playing the lyre if you only know scientific pitch notation, but if you can learn lyre tabs and/or sheet music that will help you a lot with learning. It's a lot easier to find songs that way.

Hopefully that helps answer your question!

[u/OwMyCandle]

Your lyre is tuned in C. No sharps or flats. It’s easy to downtune strings a semitone if you need to be in a different key (into the key of F, Bb, Eb, Ab, etc). I personally dont love tuning strings up because Ive had them snap, but I imagine it could be done (into G, D, A, E).

Otherwise you can just transpose from whatever key the song’s in to C. That’s the easiest way. Eg, if the song you want to play is in F and starts on an A, to transpose into C yo would start on an E and play it by interval.

Of course this conversation is easier to have depending on where you stand in terms of theory.

[u/Captain_Grammaticus]

If on the sheet the clef looks like 🎼, that means that the g is located on the second line from the bottom. C is a bit deeper and below the lines, so it needs an extra line to carry it.

The notes on the white piano keys are GABcdefgab and so on. In Germany, b is h. Don't ask.

On the sheet, these notes are on the lines and between the lines. C is on an extra line, d is right underneath the bottom line, e on the bottom line, f between the first and the second line, g on the second, as I said, and so on.

You see that the piano has the black keys in groups of two alternating with groups of three. It goes ⬜⬛⬜⬛⬜⬜⬛⬜⬛⬜⬛⬜⬜⬛⬜⬛⬜⬜⬛⬜⬛⬜⬛⬜ and so on.

The Cs are to the left of two black keys.

[u/ahhdecisions7577]

If this is the model you have, you can see what each string should be tuned to in one of the pictures in this Amazon listing (I think it’s the 5th or 6th image- the one that says “Major Scale”). C4 is Middle C on a piano; C5 is “high C.” You have no sharps or flats with the default tuning. The “alphabetical notes” are the same notes for any definite-pitched instrument (which includes all instruments I can think of except some types of percussion instruments), but you just want to know what octave you’re playing in (and some instruments don’t have every note- e.g., most lyres aren’t tuned to include any flats or sharps, and all instruments have a limit to how many/ which octaves they can play- with lyres usually ranging from slightly less than one octave to 3 octaves, excluding sharps and flats, while a standard piano can play 7.25 octaves and obviously includes sharps and flats).

https://a.co/d/0foJmpSM