Notopedia is envisaged as the world's largest collection of musical sounds – separate notes played on a multitude of instruments. The project may be in its initial stage now but we intend to make it big.
We want to collect musical notes of as many instruments from as many locations as possible. The platform is organized on the same principles as Wikipedia (hence the name) – created by volunteers around the world. Each and every one of you can contribute to it and use it.
Nobody will ever own it, but it belongs to everyone. It’s free and will always remain free for most purposes – creative work or scientific research in whatever field (musical studies proper, ethnomusicology, cultural studies, applied acoustics, etc.). Only if you intend to use the collection or any part of it commercially, we will ask you (see Terms and Conditions) to pay a fee.
The proceeds will be used solely to fund the development of the project. Notes are like an alphabet for music, and while records of great musical pieces and outstanding performers are key to preserving the humankind’s musical heritage, it is also worthwhile to learn more about and better understand the basic elements music is made of.
This seemingly unassuming inventory work may lead to many exciting discoveries! Every single instrument, every single musician’s way of producing sounds is unique. The more we learn about them, the more colors we can add to our musical pallet. This is not merely a statistical exercise though.
In due course, it will help develop precise, objective mathematical algorithms for evaluating essential qualities of every musical instrument, recording or sound. Notopedia is intended to collect analogous sounds only. Electronic, synthesized, or sounds that have been otherwise tampered with remain beyond the scope of this collection.
Making your contribution by recording a few notes requires relatively little effort, yet you will encourage others to do the same, and together we can create something big, illuminating and inspiring. Look at it as a worldwide musical flash mob of a kind … join in and leave your own indelible trace on the musical map of the world!
Add your contribution to the music note database
There are minimal but indispensable requirements for files you upload. Turn on your recording device and play a chromatic scale on your instrument, that is, all the notes that can be played on your instrument from the lowest to the highest; for stringed instruments that have two or more strings, you need to play the chromatic scales of each string. Make minimal pauses between played notes so that our algorithm can “cut” your recording into individual notes; the same algorithm will independently determine the pitch of the notes and place them in the database. An example can be seen in the video.