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
That’s just tradition basically. You could easily shift all the notes and still play music and the note system would still work. Whats important for harmonics is the relative distance between the notes, so you must shift them accordingly (the frequency must double from over the 7 notes, so you can only change them multiplicatively and still have working notes)
There is no reason to pick these frequencies. They were picked once and people used them. In other music traditions like in china they use other systems
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