MUS 048 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Semitone, Major Scale, Chromatic Scale
14 Sep 2017
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Document Summary
Music draws on only a limited number of fixed pitches. Scale - pitches assembled in a collection; a pool of pitches available for making music. Different scales used in musical cultures of the world. From them, infinite array of melodies and other musical structures appear. If you sing a melody, you will have employed pitches of a scale. Interval - two pitches that have a certain distance between them. Octave - successive pitches at which one is played at a higher level. When strings vibrate, the vibrate not only along full length but in halves and fractions (overtones). A vibrating string has exactly half as long as another will reinforce longer string"s stronger overtone. Pitches that are an octave apart have frequencies of 2:1 ratio. Men and women sing in different octave levels but think of it as the same song. Range of pitches that we hear seems to fall into series of duplicating segments.
