My Irish Names for Notes by Letter

Fretted instruments have twelve notes. In Irish session music, we commonly use only 8 of those notes, plus two others on occasion. The 8 notes we use most commonly are D E F# G A B C C# and D. Not coincidentally, these are the 8 notes on a D-whistle. The two other notes that are also used on occasion are G# (like for tunes in A-major) and F (like for tunes in D-dorian). Altogether these ten notes are D E F F# G G# A B C and C#. 

I was looking for a one-syllable phonetic name I could use for each of these ten different notes to create something like a letter based lilting mnemonic to help with memorization and ear training. D, E, G, A, B and C already have names: dee, ee, gee, ay, bee, see. Those are good to go. 

The letter F is also one syllable, but in Irish music my observation has been that F# (F-sharp) shows up in like 99% of the tunes, whereas F (F-natural) only makes it into about 1% of the tunes. So I prefer to call F# "eff" since it's the "F" note used in the vast majority of Irish session tunes. 

That leaves us needing one-syllable names for F-natural, G# and C#. I'll start with C# since it's a very common note to have to play. I can't call it C-sharp because that's two syllables. So I call it shee, which stands for "sharp C". The sh sound from sharp gets used in my made up name for this note. Shee sounds different enough from see to stand out.

For G-sharp, I think "gree" is the name that works best. This stands for "raised G". A raised note is one note sharper than it normally is. So that's why this is gree. I know that's a stretch, but you have to stretch to the 6th fret of the D string to reach that gree note, so it might just make sense. (I also considered geesh as this note's name but it doesn't have the same ring to it.)

In the case of F-natural, I'm already using "eff" to stand for the F# note, so I was thinking "feff" would be a good choice. It stands for "flat F". If F# is our normal F note, then F-natural is the flattened version. Hence feff.

In summary, here are the notes:

D = dee

E = ee

F = feff (or deff for diminished F)

F# = eff

G = gee

G# = gree

A = ay

B = bee

C = see

C# = shee

Now for a switcheroo. I'm also considering using numbers one, two, three, four, five, six and sev. That's "sev" for seven because it's one syllable. If I use a movable numbering system, then one would apply to the note D for two-sharp tunes, but one would become G for one-sharp tunes. For three-sharp tunes, one is the note A, and for zero sharp tunes 1 is the note C. That's basically just using a scale-based numbering method.

Even in a movable numbering system, I still need number-words for the "accidental" notes that show up in Irish tunes. In a one-sharp tune C would be note four, so a C-sharp note could be "roar" for raised four. However, a C-natural in a two-sharp tune could be "dev" for diminished sev. An F-natural accidental in a two-sharp tune like the F that appears in Chief O'Neill's Favorite could be "dee" since it's a diminished three, or "fee" since it's a flat three. Some tunes, like Rolling in the Ryegrass, may not want to conform to this structure since they are hard to pin down as having one or two sharps. 

That's why I'm also considering a Fixed numbering system, based around the D scale. Instead of basing it around C, which is what music theory would do, I would base a fixed numbering system around D since the D-scale (two sharps) and the D-note (most common tonal center?) are arguably the home base of Irish music.

Maybe these number assignements could work?

D = one

E = two

F = fee (for flat three)

F# = three

G = four

G# = roar (for raised four)

A = five

B = six

C = dev (for diminished sev)

C# = sev

Would it get confusing to always think of note G as four, even in tunes like Kesh Jig or Miss Mcleod's Reel where it is most definitely the tonal center? I dunno.

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