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An octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double or half its frequency. For example, if one note has a frequency of 440 Hz, the note one octave above is at 880 Hz, and the note one octave below is at 220 Hz. The ratio of frequencies of two notes an octave apart is therefore 2:1.
- What Are The 12 Notes Used in Western Music?
- Why Are There only 12 Notes and How Did They Come About?
- What Are The Most ‘Harmonious’ Intervals?
- Does Any Music Get Composed Using More Than These 12 Notes?
- What About Pop and Rock Music?
- And Music All Around The World?
Western music typically uses 12 notes – C, D, E, F, G, A and B, plus five flats and equivalent sharps in between, which are: C sharp/D flat (they’re the same note, just named differently depending on what key signatureis being used), D sharp/E flat, F sharp/G flat, G sharp/A flat and A sharp/B flat. So the final order of the 12-note chromatic scale...
These 12 notes have typically been used to compose most of the Western music we listen to. The reasons music has landed on these specific notes can be summed up as a convergence of convenience, science and listener preferences. And – how we split up an ‘octave’. So, how do we get that? All sounds are the result of waves, and the frequency of waves ...
Most tuning systems around the world tend to prioritise building music around this most pleasing octave interval. And once we have this octave, it’s about how we divide that up. And that divide in Western music is prioritised around those intervals that are ‘harmonious’ like the octave. The next most pleasing intervals are the perfect fifth and the...
More than 12 notes exist in actual sound waves, and these are most commonly explored in what is called ‘microtonal’ music – music that uses the notes in betweenthe notes. If the 12 notes of the typical scale exist due to intervals, and how we’re dividing the octave we’ve talked about, it’s a case of finding a new way to divide that octave to find a...
Yep, the same 12 notes. Western popular genres tend to use the same notes and intervals we hear in classical music. Some popular genres have artists that experiment with microtonalism, and using the ‘notes between the notes’, with Australian psychedelic rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and British singer-songwriter Dua Lipa being among th...
Talking about 12 notes in music generally applies to music from the West and from some other parts of the world, but certainly isn’t an exhaustive system for all music. Arabic music had a 17-tone scale from around the thirteenth century, with the modern Arabic tone system now dividing the octave into 24, instead of 12 notes. And Indian classical mu...
Feb 26, 2010 · What I will explain here is the origin of the seven note Western musical scale in terms of the consonance of the octave and the consonance of the fifth, which in turn have their origins in the physics of the vibrating string.
Apr 18, 2020 · First, let's be clear that the standard (major) musical scale divides the octave into seven parts, not eight. The word "octave" comes from eight, because a unison (two notes sounding at the same frequency) is considered to be a "prime" or kind of a "one" in the system, rather than zero.
The word "octave" comes from a Latin root meaning "eight". It seems an odd name for a frequency that is two times, not eight times, higher. The octave was named by musicians who were more interested in how octaves are divided into scales, than in how their frequencies are related.
Sep 26, 2024 · An octave is a musical interval that separates one note from another note that has double (or half) its frequency. This means that if you start at a note, say C, and move up eight steps in the musical scale (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C), you land on the same note but at a higher pitch.
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Since the human ear tends to hear both notes as being essentially "the same," notes played an octave apart are given the same note name in the Western system of music notation—for example, the name of a note an octave above A is also A. This is called octave equivalency, and is closely related to the concept of harmonics. This is similar to ...
