The lowest note in the medieval hexachord system, and the starting point on the Guidonian hand (at the tip of the thumb), was given the name gamma ut, contracted to gamut. The six notes of the hexachord were extended to span nearly three octaves and ‘gamut’ came to refer to the whole musical scale represented on the hand. The word is still used today to mean the full range, as in the ‘gamut of emotions’. 

Instead of using conventional music notation, which by the late eighteenth century looked very similar to modern music notation, Armour placed the solmisation syllables directly onto the five-line stave. The musical stave was another of Guido of Arezzo’s inventions, although his stave only had four lines.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, there was a push to improve the standard of psalm singing in Scotland and several tune books and anthologies appeared which revived the old Scottish psalm tunes and adapted English tunes to the Scottish metres. Because it was considered sinful to sing psalms outside of worship, practice verses were substituted. Two such verses have been jotted down on the back of pages in the manuscript.