– Why are musical notes what they are and not some other sound frequency?

Question

Some other musical post here made me wonder – why are notes what they are?

Why are there specifically 7 across all instruments? Why are they defined at their frequencies instead of shifting them all a bit to right or a bit to left? Is that just a coincidence or is there a reason? Are we missing a ton of music because we do not use notes for all the frequencies between the notes? And finally, why do notes repeat themselves, why is it ABCDEFG-ABC…, instead of just ABCDEFG-HIJ…?

Thanks!

In: Other

Answer 1

You have a lot of interrelated questions, but I can answer one a bit: 

>Why are they defined at their frequencies instead of shifting them all a bit to right or a bit to left?

We collectively decided in the early 1900s that A = 440 Hz, and then everything else is measured relative to that. Prior to that time, A might have varied up or down a bit in different places, and old organs still exist in Europe that are tuned slightly differently.

There’s a fringe movement that advocates for A = 432 Hz because they say it matches the natural frequencies of the human body (or something). This is mostly considered new age nonsense to everyone else.