Define octave4/17/2023 ![]() Going to the depths of excellent answer). Musical octave to understand its full meaning. (The musical definition of octave was explained above.) It is anĪpproximation of how the notes represented by a musical OctaveĪre measured scientifically, but there is much more to know about our ![]() Risks blurring the lines between musical and scientific terminology. Tonic frequency x 2 it is not a musical definition, does not explain how and why eight/oct is the root of octave, and.The actual values that delimit a musical octave are determined by the tuningĬonvention being used: An octave is usually not exactly tonicįrequency x 2 but hovers around that value - a close enoughĪpproximation so that most ears discern octave equivalence.Sometimes, an octave is defined as the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency.Īlthough this sounds nicely mathematical and scientific, it is not very correct: Musical terms may sometimes sound scientific and mathematical, and, like everything else, music has scientific underpinnings which are in some ways manifest in the musical lexicon, but the language of music is not the same as the language of science.įailure to understand this distinction is the source of endless confusion for those seeking to understand music 'scientifically' or mathematically. They are not the same: The language of music is a language for describing the music we play and hear - a refection of our music, which is hardly scientific. Relevant to the octave, as well as many other musical terms, it is very important to distinguish between musical terminology and mathematical/scientific terminology which attempts to explain music in scientific terms. If we build the scale A->B->C->D->E->F->G->A, the interval between A-1 and A-2 is called an Octave, because it spans 8 notes (including the two A's themselves.) The term Octave is also used to describe an interval - the musical distance between 2 notes. This scale is an ordered collection of notes, iterating through the 8 notes of the musical alphabet of 7 notes and ending with same note we started on:Ĭ->D->E->F->G->A->B->C is also an octave.ĭo-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do is an octave using solfège nomenclature. You may be confused because in our music, we use the term Octave in two different ways. It deals with notes, intervals, scales, keys, chords and other distinctly musical terms.įirst: Octave literally means a series of Eight, from the Latin octo - eight. The musical lexicon does not deal with frequencies. What exactly is an octave? Is it a range of frequencies?Īn octave is not a range of frequencies. In that case, we were using 'octave' in the sense of an interval, but sometimes the word is used in the sense of a range of notes that cover the interval of an octave: If we take a look at this table of musical notes, and look at any two adjacent C notes, we can see that they do have this 'doubling in frequency' relationship: This is why, in our system for naming notes, notes an octave apart are given the same letter name - because they have this sense of similarity to them. so the two notes are stimulating similar bits of our inner ear. ) would be a subset of those found in a note an octave lower (250, 500, 750, 1000, 1250, 1500. In a way, this is unsurprising, as the harmonics that would typically be found in a musical note at, say, 500 Hz (500, 1000, 1500. Why is this factor of 2 so special? The reason is octave equivalence - the way that most people hear something very similar between two notes that are a factor of 2 in frequency apart. If we wanted to go down an octave, we'd halve it, taking us to 50Hz. if we started with our 100Hz note again, and we wanted to go up an octave, we would double the frequency, taking us to 200Hz. An octave is simply an interval created by the use of the factor 2 instead - e.g. In our example there, we used a multiplication of 1.5. In general, we can say most people have a strong sense of relative pitch, based on the log of the frequency scale. So if we take a note at 100 Hz, and multiply that frequency by 1.5 to give us another note at 150 Hz, the perceived interval (difference in pitch) would be the same as the interval between 500Hz and 750Hz (750 being 500 x 1.5). For example, perhaps going up each semitone on the piano might mean an increase of a certain number of Hz each time?Īctually, the relationship between pitch and frequency is that each time we multiply the frequency by a certain factor, we end up subjectively increasing the pitch by the same amount. You would think that the two would be very closely-related. Frequency refers to the measurable number of cycles per second (Hz) in the sound wave, while 'pitch' refers to (subjectively) how low or high the note sounds to us. There are two words that we use to describe how 'high' (or 'low') a musical note is in absolute terms - frequency and pitch.
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