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Concert pitch is the pitch reference to which a group of musical instruments are tuned for a performance. Concert pitch may vary from ensemble to ensemble, and has varied widely over time. The ISO defines international standard pitch as A440 , setting 440 Hz as the frequency of the A above middle C .
The following year, Swinburne represented the Musical Association at a preliminary conference to determine the British stance on concert pitch. British piano tuners had adopted A439 as the standard in 1899, but Swinburne pointed out that 439 was a prime number, whereas 440 could be more easily factored and electronically synthesized.
Pitch is a perceptual property that allows sounds to be ordered on a frequency-related scale, [1] or more commonly, pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies. [2] Pitch is a major auditory attribute of musical tones, along with duration, loudness, and timbre ...
Tuning is the process of adjusting the pitch of one or many tones from musical instruments to establish typical intervals between these tones. Tuning is usually based on a fixed reference, such as A = 440 Hz. The term "out of tune" refers to a pitch/tone that is either too high or too low in relation to a given reference pitch. While an ...
Historically, concert pitch has varied. For an instrument in equal temperament tuned to the A440 pitch standard widely adopted in 1939, middle C has a frequency around 261.63 Hz [1] (for other notes see piano key frequencies).
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). [ 1 ] [ 2 ] For example, to get the frequency one semitone up from A 4 (A ♯ 4 ), multiply 440 Hz by the twelfth root of two.
Transformational theory is a branch of music theory developed by David Lewin in the 1980s, and formally introduced in his 1987 work, Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations. The theory, which models musical transformations as elements of a mathematical group , can be used to analyze both tonal and atonal music .
In all systems of tuning, every pitch may be derived from its relationship to a chosen fixed pitch, which is usually A440 (440 Hz), the note A above middle C. For a classical piano and musical theory, the middle C is usually labelled as C 4 (as in scientific pitch notation ); However, in the MIDI standard definition this middle C (261.626 Hz ...