Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
An octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double or half its frequency. For example, if one note has a frequency of 440 Hz, the note one octave above is at 880 Hz, and the note one octave below is at 220 Hz. The ratio of frequencies of two notes an octave apart is therefore 2:1.
For example, C 4 is one note above B 3, and A 5 is one note above G 5. The octave number is tied to the alphabetic character used to describe the pitch, with the division between note letters ‘B’ and ‘C’, thus: "B 3" and all of its possible variants (B, B ♭, B, B ♯, B) would properly be designated as being in octave "3".
Octave clef Treble and bass clefs can be modified by octave numbers. An "8" below the clef (as in the diagram) indicates that pitches will sound an octave lower than they would with the unmodified clef. A "15" below indicates a two-octave shift. These numbers may also be used above the clef to indicate pitches one or two octaves higher.
Notes in each include an additional prime symbol below the note's letter. The octave starting at middle C is called the "small" octave. Notes in it are written as lower case letters, so middle C itself is written c in Helmholtz notation. The next higher octave is called "one-lined". Notes in it include a prime symbol above the note's letter.
A jump from the lowest semitone to the highest semitone in one octave doubles the frequency (for example, the fifth A is 440 Hz and the sixth A is 880 Hz). The frequency of a pitch is derived by multiplying (ascending) or dividing (descending) the frequency of the previous pitch by the twelfth root of two (approximately 1.059463).
Sometimes written with “8v” below the treble, to represent the octave (8 tones in a major scale). Tenor C is an organ builder's term for small C or C 3 (130.813 Hz), the note one octave below middle C. In older stoplists it usually means that a rank was not yet full compass, omitting the bottom octave, until that octave was added later on.
This chart uses standard numberings for octaves where middle C corresponds to C 4. In the MIDI language middle C is referred to as MIDI note number 60. The lowest note that a pipe organ can sound (with a true pipe) is C −1 (or CCCC), which is 8 Hz, below the range of human hearing and not visible on this chart.
Notes in the ranges outside the central octave are represented with one or more dots above or below the each number. For the most part, these cipher notations are mainly used to notate the skeletal melody (the balungan ) and vocal parts ( gerongan ), although transcriptions of the elaborating instrument variations are sometimes used for ...