The musical scales are A B C D E F G A, or Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do. If you do it that way, yes, there are eight. But the last note is the same as the first but at a higher pitch. If this were math, we’d basically be dealing with a base-7 system, with A or Do playing the part of zero.
So why is the set of scales called an octave if it’s all based on a base-7 system?
EDIT: Many of the first answers from when I originally asked were helpful but now I’m getting a lot of wrong answers from people who don’t seem to understand how numbers work. In a base-8 system, there are eight unique numbers, 0 through 7, after which it goes to 10. If you translate the notes into numbers, you don’t get 0 through 7, though. You get 0 through 6, after which it goes to 10 at the second Do. That’s why I was trying to reconcile that with the term “octave.”
In: 233
God everyone’s answering this in a non-5-year-old way.
Imagine each note in a scale is a different colored block, and they’re all lined up. The letters on them repeat, but the colors don’t repeat. There can be any number of them, but let’s say there’s 14 of them. They’re laid out like so:
| C | D | E | F | G | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | A | B |
If I told you to count these blocks, you’d do it like this:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
If I told you to grab the 1st block and the 8th block, you’d end up with two different “C” blocks. They’re both C, but a different color (or tone).
Hence, octave. Music is like counting, less like math. If it started on 0, it’d make this illustration very difficult, and I always use this to teach when I give music lessons.
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