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
I can’t answer all your questions, but the repeating letters are because each octave is exactly 2x the frequency of the one below it, so all As sound “the same”, and will layer over top of each other perfectly
In standard tuning, the A above middle C is 440hz, the A above that is 880hz, and the A below it is 220hz
Why 440? That was just the standard pitch that various countries finally agreed on after having various pitches within a similar range. For example, the French and Austrians used 435hz. In 1975 the ISO standardized that A as 440hz and now that’s just what we all use
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