What makes a sound a “music note” vs being just a regular sound?
In: 5
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A consistent, repeated frequency. All sounds are vibrations, a musical note consistently vibrates at the same frequency.
The notes on a piano range in frequency from ~~16.5 Hz~~ 27.5 Hz on the low end to 7900 Hz on the high end
[This is a famous area of research with many complicated factors.](http://www.philomel.com/phantom_words/pages.php?i=1014) Repetition matters, as does just purely deciding to interpret a sound as “music” — something many people miss about John Cage’s 4’33”.
Every sound has a frequency. Some sounds within the range of human hearing mention their frequency and compliment each other.
A frequency. If I tap my finger against the table once a second, it’s not going to sound like a note, it’s going to sound like I’m tapping my finger against the table. However, if I tap my finger 440 times a second, it’s not going to sound like tapping anymore, it’s going to sound like the note A4. There’s a great demonstration of this, where someone plays E on the piano faster and faster, and as he gets to playing it more than 20 times a second (20Hz, the lower limit of human hearing), it begins to sound more and more like a sine wave of whatever frequency the note is being played at.