Output the list of musical notes

Question

This task is simple: Write a program or function that outputs the list of all musical notes (using English note names) from A♭ to G♯.

All notes without a name consisting of a single letter (i.e. black notes on a musical keyboard) should have their name printed twice, once as the sharp of a note, once as the flat of one. Sharp or flat notes that can be described with a single letter, like B♯ (C) or F♭ (E) should not be outputted.

Here is an example of the output:

Ab, A, A#, Bb, B, C, C#, Db, D, D#, Eb, E, F, F#, Gb, G, G#

Specifications

• The program or function must not take any input.

• The notes may be printed in any order, and in any list output permitted by our standard I/O rules

• The sharp and flat Unicode symbols (♯/♭) may be substituted with b and #

• As always, Standard loopholes are forbidden.

• As this is code-golf, the smallest program, in bytes, wins.

Answer 1

Malbolge, 482 370 353 bytes

R1: Removed commas inbetween (as not required by the challenge)

R2: Shave off a few bytes

('<;_#!=6Z|{8xUwvt,PrqonKmk)"FhCUTdb?`+<;:[Z7YtVU2T|/g-O+i(gJrHc#EC~B{@zZxw:tt'r5Qo"!l/K-hUfe?bP``_Lo~[}|X2VCTR3Q+N`_^9+7Hji3ffdAc~w|u;]\wpon4VUSSQ.PONcb(JI^]#DCYX|@?>=<:u9NMRKo32MFj.C,Ae)>'<%:^"!~5:3WxwwuRts0q(Lnml)"Fhgfe"y?a`_zyxq7YXWlUj0RgfkjMb(JI^c\[Z~BAV?T=Rv987Mq44310FEi-,G@)>b&%#"8=6Z{{yyw/Sut1*)('Km$k(!Efe{zyx>`uz]r8ZXnm3TTih.PkNchg`&HFF[DY}Az

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Answer 2

CP-1610 assembly (Intellivision), 31 DECLEs¹ = 39 bytes

A routine taking an output pointer in R4 and writing the notes there, separated with spaces. In the example code, we write directly to the screen.

Hex dump (routine only)

275 001 2BD 03C 048 1DB 2B8 012 044 2A9 2BA 108 078 201 003 262
261 263 2FA 008 37A 140 225 00B 089 22C 011 2B7 018 210 000

Full source

                ROMW    10              ; use 10-bit ROM width
                ORG     $4800           ; map this program at $4800

                ;; ------------------------------------------------------------- ;;
                ;;  test code                                                    ;;
                ;; ------------------------------------------------------------- ;;
4800            SDBD                    ; set up an interrupt service routine
4801            MVII    #isr,     R0    ; to do some minimal STIC initialization
4804            MVO     R0,       $100
4806            SWAP    R0
4807            MVO     R0,       $101

4809            EIS                     ; enable interrupts

480A            MVII    #$200,    R4    ; R4 = backtab pointer
480C            CALL    notes           ; invoke our routine

480F            DECR    R7              ; loop forever

                ;; ------------------------------------------------------------- ;;
                ;;  ISR                                                          ;;
                ;; ------------------------------------------------------------- ;;
      isr       PROC

4810            MVO     R0,       $0020 ; enable display

4812            CLRR    R0
4813            MVO     R0,       $0030 ; no horizontal delay
4815            MVO     R0,       $0031 ; no vertical delay
4817            MVO     R0,       $0032 ; no border extension
4819            MVII    #$D,      R0
481B            MVO     R0,       $0028 ; light-blue background
481D            MVO     R0,       $002C ; light-blue border

481F            JR      R5              ; return from ISR

                ENDP

                ;; ------------------------------------------------------------- ;;
                ;;  routine                                                      ;;
                ;; ------------------------------------------------------------- ;;
      notes     PROC

4820            PSHR    R5              ; save return address

4821            SDBD                    ; R5 = pointer to @@chr
4822            MVII    #@@chr,   R5
4825            CLRR    R3              ; R3 = 0 (space)
4826            MVII    #$12,     R0    ; R0 = bitmask = $12
4828            SWAP    R0,       2     ; extend it to $1212

4829  @@loop    MVI@    R5,       R1    ; R1 = next symbol
482A            MVII    #('A'-32)*8, R2 ; R2 = 'A' character

482C  @@note    SARC    R0              ; right shift the bitmask
482D            BC      @@next          ; skip this note if the carry is set

482F            MVO@    R2,       R4    ; append the note
4830            MVO@    R1,       R4    ; append the symbol
4831            MVO@    R3,       R4    ; append a space

4832  @@next    ADDI    #8,       R2    ; advance to the next note
4834            CMPI    #('H'-32)*8, R2 ; is it now a 'H'?
4836            BLT     @@note          ; if not, process the inner loop

4838            TSTR    R1              ; was the symbol a space?
4839            BNEQ    @@loop          ; if not, process the outer loop

483B            PULR    R7              ; return

483C  @@chr     DECLE   ('#'-32)*8      ; '#'
483D            DECLE   ('b'-32)*8      ; 'b'
483E            DECLE   0               ; space

                ENDP

Output

^{screenshot from jzIntv}

---

_{1. A CP-1610 opcode is encoded with a 10-bit value, known as a 'DECLE'. This routine is 31 DECLEs long, starting at $4820 and ending at $483E (included).}

Answer 3

Python 3, 50 bytes

print(*map(''.join,zip(3*'ADGBCEF',7*' '+5*'#b')))

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Python 2: 48 bytes

This code can be adjusted as to include B# and Cb, at the cost of no additional bytes. This can be achieved by replacing 5 with 6.

---

Additionally, it is (finally) shorter than just outputting the plain string:

Python 3, 51 bytes

exit('Ab A A# Bb B C C# Db D D# Eb E F F# Gb G G#')

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Python 2: 50 bytes

Answer 4

05AB1E, 16 15 13 bytes

Au…b #âŽ7×bûÏ

-2 bytes thanks to @maxb.

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Outputs as a list, where the single-char notes are with a trailing space.

Explanation:

Au             # Push the lowercase alphabet, and uppercase it
  …b #         # Push string "b #"
      â        # Take the cartesian product of both strings to create all possible pairs:
               #  ["Ab","A ","A#","Bb","B ","B#",...,"Zb","Z ","Z#"]
       Ž7×     # Push compressed integer 1999
          b    # Convert it to a binary string "11111001111"
           û   # Palindromize it to "111110011111110011111"
            Ï  # Only leave the notes in the list at the truthy values (1), (the trailing
               # items beyond the length of this binary string are also discarded)
               # (after which the result is output implicitly)

See this 05AB1E tip of mine (section How to compress large integers?) to understand why Ž7× is 1999.

Ž7× could alternatively be ₄·< (1000, double, decrease by 1) for the same byte-count.

Answer 5

Perl 6, 41 bytes

{S:g/[E|B]\#...//}o{'A'..'G'X~'b #'.comb}

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Simple cross product of the notes and the sharps/flats, followed by removing the extra invalid notes. This is an anonymous code block that produces the string:

Ab A  A# Bb B   C  C# Db D  D# Eb E   F  F# Gb G  G#

Answer 6

Jelly, 18?* 20 bytes

ØAḣ7µp⁾b#Żs6ḣ€4ẎḊ;W€

A monadic Link returning a list of lists of characters.

* _{If a mixed list of (a) lists of characters and (b) characters is acceptable remove the trailing W€ for 18.}

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How?

ØAḣ7µp⁾b#Żs6ḣ€4ẎḊ;W€ - Link: no argument
ØA                   - list of characters     [A-Z]
  ḣ7                 - head to 7              "ABCDEFG"
    µ                - new monadic link (call that X)
      ⁾b#            - list of characters     "b#"
     p               - Cartesian product      ["Ab","A#","Bb","B#","Cb","C#","Db","D#","Eb","E#","Fb","F#","Gb","G#"]
         Ż           - prepend a zero       [0,"Ab","A#","Bb","B#","Cb","C#","Db","D#","Eb","E#","Fb","F#","Gb","G#"]
          s6         - split into sixes    [[0,"Ab","A#","Bb","B#","Cb"],["C#","Db","D#","Eb","E#","Fb"],["F#","Gb","G#"]]
            ḣ€4      - head each to 4      [[0,"Ab","A#","Bb"],["C#","Db","D#","Eb"],["F#","Gb","G#"]]
               Ẏ     - tighten              [0,"Ab","A#","Bb","C#","Db","D#","Eb","F#","Gb","G#"]
                Ḋ    - dequeue                ["Ab","A#","Bb","C#","Db","D#","Eb","F#","Gb","G#"]
                  W€ - wrap each (of X)       ["A","B","C","D","E","F","G"]
                 ;   - concatenate            ["Ab","A#","Bb","C#","Db","D#","Eb","F#","Gb","G#","A","B","C","D","E","F","G"]

Answer 7

Retina 0.8.2, 33 bytes

ABCDEFG
.
 $&b $& $&#
 [BE]#...

Try it online! Explanation:

ABCDEFG

Insert the base note names.

.
 $&b $& $&#

Expand each note to include flat and sharp versions.

 [BE]#...

Delete B#, E# and also the notes following them (Cb and Eb).

Answer 8

R, 50 bytes

cat("Ab,A,A#,Bb,B,C,C#,Db,D,D#,Eb,E,F,F#,Gb,G,G#")

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Boring answer.

R, 60 bytes

cat(outer(LETTERS[1:7],c("#","","b"),paste0)[-c(2,5,17,20)])

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Answer 9

Charcoal, 21 bytes

Φ⪪⭆…α⁷⭆b #⁺ι벧↨⊖⊘φ²κ

Try it online! Link is to verbose version of code. Explanation:

    α                   Predefined variable uppercase alphabet
   … ⁷                  First 7 letters i.e. `ABCEDFG`
  ⭆                     Map over characters and join
       b #              Literal string `b #`
      ⭆                 Map over characters and join
          ⁺ιλ           Concatenate outer and inner characters
 ⪪           ²          Split back into substrings of length 2
Φ                       Filter where nonzero
                  φ     Predefined variable 1000
                 ⊘      Halved i.e. 500
                ⊖       Decremented i.e 499
               ↨   ²    Converted to base 2 i.e. [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1]
              §     κ   Cyclically indexed by outer index
                        Implicitly print matching values on separate lines

Answer 10

Stax, 17 15 bytes

║♠+I▬┌ó£ΔφΔ`╗╨Å

Run and debug it

Bonus program: print the fancy symbols

Answer 11

Japt, 23 22 bytes

;B¯7
ï"b #" fÏÄ %9%8<6

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;B          Alphabet
  ¯7        First seven characters ("ABCDEFG")
            Assign to U
ï"b #"       Cartesian product with "b #" ("Ab,A ,A#,Bb,B ,B#,Cb,C ,C#,Db,D ,D#,Eb,E ,E#,Fb,F ,F#,Gb,G ,G#")
f           Filter:
 ÏÄ           Is index + 1
   %9%8       Mod 9 Mod 8
     <6       Less than 6
            End filter ("Ab,A ,A#,Bb,B ,C ,C#,Db,D ,D#,Eb,E ,F ,F#,Gb,G ,G#")

Answer 12

dzaima/APL REPL, 38 28 25 bytes

(⊤2056111)⌿,' b#'∘.,⍨7↑⎕A

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Answer 13

Ruby, 43 bytes

p (2..18).map{|i|"FCGDAEB"[i%7]+"b #"[i/7]}

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With the range 0..20 this would print an array containing all the flats, all the naturals and all the sharps. The undesired ones Fb Cb E# B# are omitted by using the range 2..18

The notes are printed out ordered according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths , or in other words ascending by 7 semitones (a frequency ratio of almost exactly 1.5) each time.

This leads to the note letter order given, in which each note is five degrees inclusive (known as a "fifth") above the previous one. For example F->C is FGABC

Answer 14

brainfuck, 106 bytes

+++[[-<+>>++<]>]<<[-<->]++<<++<,+<-<[->+>+<<]<+[>>>>>+>-[<.<<<.>.[<]]>[>]<+[---<.<.<.[<]]>[>]<++<.<<.<<<-]

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Outputs each note separated by carriage returns.

Answer 15

Zsh, 36 bytes

<<<${${(F):-{A..G}{b,,#}}//[BE]#???}

An uglier solution, but it saves two characters. (F) joins a list on newlines, and //[BE]#??? removes the parts of the string we need.

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---

Zsh, 38 bytes

<<<${${:-{A..G}{b,,#}}:#([BE]#|[CF]b)}

I always enjoy it when Zsh beats Perl (hopefully I don't speak too soon...).

<<<${${:-{A..G}{b,,#}}:#([BE]#|[CF]b)}
     ${:-             }                 # empty-fallback, basically an anonymous parameter expansion
         {A..G}{b,,#}                   # Cross product range A-G with b,(nothing),#
   ${                 :#             }  # Remove matching elements
                        ([BE]#|[CF]b)   # B#, E#, Cb, Fb
<<<                                     # Print to stdout

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Answer 16

Lost, 105 bytes

v<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>%?"Ab A A# Bb B C C# Db D D# Eb E F F# Gb G G\9"-+@

Outputs with #b and space delimiter.

Try it online or verify that it's deterministic.

Explanation:

Explanation of the language in general:

Lost is a 2D path-walking language. Most 2D path-walking languages start at the top-left position and travel towards the right by default. Lost is unique however, in that both the start position AND starting direction it travels in is completely random. So making the program deterministic, meaning it will have the same output regardless of where it starts or travels, can be quite tricky.

A Lost program of 2 rows and 5 characters per row can have 40 possible program flows. It can start on any one of the 10 characters in the program, and it can start traveling up/north, down/south, left/west, or right/east.

In Lost you therefore want to lead everything to a starting position, so it'll follow the designed path you want it to. In addition, you'll usually have to clean the stack when it starts somewhere in the middle.

Explanation of the program:

All arrows, including the reflect \ in the string, will lead the path towards the leading > on the second line. From there the program flow is as follows:

• >: travel in an east/right direction
• %: Put the safety 'off'. In a Lost program, an @ will terminate the program, but only when the safety is 'off'. When the program starts, the safety is always 'on' by default, otherwise a program flow starting at the exit character @ would immediately terminate without doing anything. The % will turn this safety 'off', so when we now encounter an @ the program will terminate (if the safety is still 'on', the @ will be a no-op instead).
• ?: Clean the top value on the stack. In some program flows it's highly likely we have a partial string on the stack, so we use this to wipe the stack clean of that potential string.
• ": Start a string, which means it will push the integer code-points of the characters used.
• Ab A A# Bb B C C# Db D D# Eb E F F# Gb G G\9: Push the code-points for these characters, being 65 98 32 65 32 65 35 32 66 98 32 66 32 67 32 67 35 32 68 98 32 68 32 68 35 32 69 98 32 69 32 70 32 70 35 32 71 98 32 71 32 71 92 57 respectively
• ": We're done pushing code-points of this string
• -+: Subtract the top two values from one another: (92-57=) 35
• @: Terminate the program if the safety is 'off' (which it is at this point). After which all the values on the stack will be output implicitly. Using the -A program argument flag, these code-points will be output as characters instead.

Minor note: The top part could also have been v<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< instead. Lost will wrap around to the other side when moving in a direction. So using v<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> could be a slightly shorter path, and since it's the same byte-count anyway, why not use it. :)

Answer 17

Jelly, 21 bytes

ØAḣ7;p¥⁾b#“¿€×Ø‘œPẎẎ€

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Answer 18

Brachylog, 36 bytes

"#b"ẹ,Ẹ↺;Ṇh₇ᵗ↔{∋ᵐc}ᶠ⟨h₅ct₁₄⟩⟨h₁₂ct₅⟩

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I'm currently in the process of brute-forcing the powerset index that would let me get rid of ⟨h₅ct₁₄⟩⟨h₁₂ct₅⟩ (and by extension ↺, since the output doesn't need to be in the same order as the example output), but it's taking quite a while... maybe I should put a minute aside to actually work out what order sublists are generated in, and compute the index that way...

Answer 19

Canvas, 23 bytes

Ｚ７ｍ｛#＋¹¹b＋］｛“╷!↕„２┬²＠？Ｐ

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22 bytes with extra newlines in the output

Answer 20

PHP, 65 bytes

Makes the list with a loop. Items are separated by _ with a trailing separator.

for(;$l=ABCDEFG[$i++];)echo$l._.[$a="$l#_",$a.$b=$l.b_,$b][$i%3];

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---

PHP, 43 bytes

PHP outputs anything as is, when not inside <?php and ?> tags.

Ab,A,A#,Bb,B,C,C#,Db,D,D#,Eb,E,F,F#,Gb,G,G#

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Answer 21

Pyth, 23 21 bytes

s<R7c.>*<r1G7"b #"2 9

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s<R7c.>*<r1G7"b #"2 9   Implicit: G=lowercase alphabet
         r1G            Convert G to upper case
        <   7           First 7 characters
       *     "b #"      Cartesian product with "b #"
     .>           2     Rotate the above 2 places to the right
    c               9   Chop into pieces of length 9
 <R7                    Trim each to length 7
s                       Flatten, implicit print

Edit: Partial rewrite to save 2 bytes, previous version: s%2c*<r1G7"b #"xLG"fhoq Try it online!

Answer 22

Commodore C64/TheC64 Mini (probably other Commodore 8-bit BASIC variants) - 52 tokenized BASIC bytes

 0?"{CTRL+N}Ab A A# Bb B C C# Db D D# Eb E F F# Gb GG#

Pressing the CTRL key plus N on the C64 keyboard goes into 'business mode' on the character set for upper/lower case characters. We may print this out in a string in one byte / token; and as we have 40 columns, the space from G to G# is not required.

We do not need to close the string in this case as it is not a multi-statemented line with a : separator.

How this looks on a Commodore C64 (and compatibles) screen is shown below.

Answer 23

T-SQL, 124 bytes

SELECT value+a
FROM STRING_SPLIT('A-B-C-D-E-F-G','-')
    ,(VALUES('b'),(''),('#'))b(a)
WHERE value+a NOT IN ('B#','E#','Cb','Fb')

Line breaks are for display purposes only.

Longer but much more interesting than the trivial version (50 bytes):

PRINT'Ab,A,A#,Bb,B,C,C#,Db,D,D#,Eb,E,F,F#,Gb,G,G#'

Answer 24

Keg, 43 bytes

The string, compressed.

AbAA\#BbBCC\#DbDD\#EbEFF\#GbGG\#(:H<[ $]')'

TIO

Answer 25

APL (Dyalog Unicode), 45 bytes

2↓(,¨⎕A)⎕R', &'⊢'AbAA#BbBCC#DbDD#EbEFF#GbGG#'

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Simple ⎕Replace operation, prepending , to each element in the string that matches each letter in the ⎕Alphabet, then dropping the first 2 characters, which are ,.

Answer 26

Brainfuck, 214 Bytes

>>>>++++++++[<++++<++++<++++++++++++<++++++++>>>>-]<<+++<++<+.>.>>.<<<.>>>.<<<.>>.>.<<<+.>.>>.<<<.>>>.<<<+.>>>.<<<.>>.>.<<<+.>.>>.<<<.>>>.<<<.>>.>.<<<+.>.>>.<<<.>>>.<<<+.>>>.<<<.>>.>.<<<+.>.>>.<<<.>>>.<<<.>>.>.<<<+

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Answer 27

JavaScript (Node.js), 84 bytes

_=>[...'ABCDEFG'].map((n,i)=>`${i%3!=2?n+'b,':''}${n}${i%3!=1?`,${n}#`:''}`).join`,`

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Just returning the string (as shown below) would be shorter by 36 bytes, but where's the fun in that?

_=>'Ab,A,A#,Bb,B,C,C#,Db,D,D#,Eb,E,F,F#,Gb,G,G#'

Answer 28

brainfuck, 255 115 bytes

--[----->+<]>-----[<+>>+>+<<-]>>+<<<-[->+++<]>+++[->>>+>+<
<<<]>>>>--->+++++++[-<<<<.>.>>.<<<.>>>.<<<.>>.>.<<<+>>>>]

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Answer 29

Bash 5, 42 bytes

x=`echo {A..G}{b,,#}`;echo ${x//[BE]#???/}

Output:

Ab A A# Bb B C C# Db D D# Eb E F F# Gb G G#

Answer 30

Perl 5, 47 41 bytes

say for'AbA#DbD#GbG#BbEbC#F#'=~/../g,A..G

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