Scales
The relative pitches of individual notes in a scale may be determined by one of a number of tuning systems. In the west, the twelve-note chromatic scale is the most common method of organization, with equal temperament now the most widely used method of tuning that scale. In it, the pitch ratio between any two successive notes of the scale is exactly the twelfth root of two (or about 1.05946). In well-tempered systems (as used in the time of Johann Sebastian Bach, for example), different methods of musical tuning were used. Almost all of these systems have one interval in common, the octave, where the pitch of one note is double the frequency of another. For example, if the A above middle C is 440 Hz, the A an octave above that will be 880 Hz .
Read more about this topic: Pitch (music)
Famous quotes containing the word scales:
“In what camera do you taste
Poison, in what darkness set
Glittering scales and point
The tipping tongue?”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“For these have governed in our lives,
And see how men have warred.
The Cross, the Crown, the Scales may all
As well have been the Sword.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Love once
Tipped the scales but now is shadowed, invisible,
Though mysteriously present, around somewhere.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)