Pitch in music is highness or lowness in the sounds you hear as you play. Notes are the written representations of these different pitches.

The way in which we name the different notes in music is with an alphabet - the musical alphabet. This begins in the same way as the standard English alphabet:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G

However, the musical alphabet only contains seven letters. After G you return back to an A, but this A will be higher in pitch than the A upon which you started.

Think of the musical alphabet as a continuous circle. Moving clockwise makes the notes higher in pitch, and moving counterclockwise makes the notes lower:

It’s easy to recite the alphabet in order, but you also need to have it memorised backwards as music can be played in either direction. 

Try saying a few rounds of each circle to get used to this.

The distance (or interval) between A to A (or B to B, C to C…) is known as one octave. 

The prefix oct- referring to the 8 notes that span an octave (A B C D E F G A). Think octopus or octogon to help you remember what an octave is.