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Pitch is a
perceptual Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...
property of
sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by ...
s that allows their ordering on a
frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from ''angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is eq ...
-related scale, 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. Pitch is a major auditory attribute of
musical tone Traditionally in Western music, a musical tone is a steady periodic sound. A musical tone is characterized by its duration, pitch, intensity (or loudness), and timbre (or quality). The notes used in music can be more complex than musical ...
s, along with duration,
loudness In acoustics, loudness is the subjective perception of sound pressure. More formally, it is defined as, "That attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to loud". The relation of ph ...
, and
timbre In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voices and musica ...
. Pitch may be quantified as a
frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from ''angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is eq ...
, but pitch is not a purely objective physical property; it is a subjective psychoacoustical attribute of sound. Historically, the study of pitch and pitch perception has been a central problem in psychoacoustics, and has been instrumental in forming and testing theories of sound representation, processing, and perception in the auditory system.


Perception


Pitch and frequency

Pitch is an auditory sensation in which a listener assigns
musical tone Traditionally in Western music, a musical tone is a steady periodic sound. A musical tone is characterized by its duration, pitch, intensity (or loudness), and timbre (or quality). The notes used in music can be more complex than musical ...
s to relative positions on a
musical scale In music theory, a scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. A scale ordered by increasing pitch is an ascending scale, and a scale ordered by decreasing pitch is a descending scale. Often, especially in the ...
based primarily on their perception of the
frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from ''angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is eq ...
of vibration. Pitch is closely related to frequency, but the two are not equivalent. Frequency is an objective, scientific attribute that can be measured. Pitch is each person's ''subjective perception'' of a sound wave, which cannot be directly measured. However, this does not necessarily mean that most people won't agree on which notes are higher and lower. The oscillations of sound waves can often be characterized in terms of ''frequency''. ''Pitches'' are usually associated with, and thus quantified as, ''frequencies'' (in cycles per second, or hertz), by comparing the sounds being assessed against sounds with pure tones (ones with periodic,
sinusoidal A sine wave, sinusoidal wave, or just sinusoid is a mathematical curve defined in terms of the '' sine'' trigonometric function, of which it is the graph. It is a type of continuous wave and also a smooth periodic function. It occurs often i ...
waveforms). Complex and aperiodic sound waves can often be assigned a ''pitch'' by this method. According to the
American National Standards Institute The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The orga ...
, pitch is the auditory attribute of sound according to which sounds can be ordered on a scale from low to high. Since pitch is such a close
proxy Proxy may refer to: * Proxy or agent (law), a substitute authorized to act for another entity or a document which authorizes the agent so to act * Proxy (climate), a measured variable used to infer the value of a variable of interest in climate re ...
for frequency, it is almost entirely determined by how quickly the sound wave is making the air vibrate and has almost nothing to do with the intensity, or
amplitude The amplitude of a periodic variable is a measure of its change in a single period (such as time or spatial period). The amplitude of a non-periodic signal is its magnitude compared with a reference value. There are various definitions of am ...
, of the wave. That is, "high" pitch means very rapid oscillation, and "low" pitch corresponds to slower oscillation. Despite that, the
idiom An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language ...
relating vertical height to sound pitch is shared by most languages. At least in English, it is just one of many deep conceptual metaphors that involve up/down. The exact etymological history of the musical sense of high and low pitch is still unclear. There is evidence that humans do actually perceive that the source of a sound is slightly higher or lower in vertical space when the sound frequency is increased or reduced.Carroll C. Pratt,
The Spatial Character of High and Low Tones
, ''Journal of Experimental Psychology'' 13 (1930): 278–85.
In most cases, the pitch of complex sounds such as
speech Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...
and
musical note In music, a note is the representation of a musical sound. Notes can represent the pitch and duration of a sound in musical notation. A note can also represent a pitch class. Notes are the building blocks of much written music: discretizatio ...
s corresponds very nearly to the repetition rate of periodic or nearly-periodic sounds, or to the
reciprocal Reciprocal may refer to: In mathematics * Multiplicative inverse, in mathematics, the number 1/''x'', which multiplied by ''x'' gives the product 1, also known as a ''reciprocal'' * Reciprocal polynomial, a polynomial obtained from another pol ...
of the time interval between repeating similar events in the sound waveform. The pitch of complex tones can be ambiguous, meaning that two or more different pitches can be perceived, depending upon the observer. When the actual
fundamental frequency The fundamental frequency, often referred to simply as the ''fundamental'', is defined as the lowest frequency of a periodic waveform. In music, the fundamental is the musical pitch of a note that is perceived as the lowest partial present. I ...
can be precisely determined through physical measurement, it may differ from the perceived pitch because of overtones, also known as upper partials,
harmonic A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', t ...
or otherwise. A complex tone composed of two sine waves of 1000 and 1200 Hz may sometimes be heard as up to three pitches: two spectral pitches at 1000 and 1200 Hz, derived from the physical frequencies of the pure tones, and the combination tone at 200 Hz, corresponding to the repetition rate of the waveform. In a situation like this, the percept at 200 Hz is commonly referred to as the
missing fundamental A harmonic sound is said to have a missing fundamental, suppressed fundamental, or phantom fundamental when its overtones suggest a fundamental frequency but the sound lacks a component at the fundamental frequency itself. The brain perceives the ...
, which is often the
greatest common divisor In mathematics, the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two or more integers, which are not all zero, is the largest positive integer that divides each of the integers. For two integers ''x'', ''y'', the greatest common divisor of ''x'' and ''y'' is ...
of the frequencies present. Pitch depends to a lesser degree on the
sound pressure Sound pressure or acoustic pressure is the local pressure deviation from the ambient (average or equilibrium) atmospheric pressure, caused by a sound wave. In air, sound pressure can be measured using a microphone, and in water with a hydrop ...
level (loudness, volume) of the tone, especially at frequencies below 1,000 Hz and above 2,000 Hz. The pitch of lower tones gets lower as sound pressure increases. For instance, a tone of 200 Hz that is very loud seems one semitone lower in pitch than if it is just barely audible. Above 2,000 Hz, the pitch gets higher as the sound gets louder. These results were obtained in the pioneering works by S. Stevens Stevens S. S. The relation of pitch to intensity//J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 1935. Vol. 6. P. 150-154. and W. Snow.Snow W. B. (1936) Change of Pitch with Loudness at Low Frequencies. J. Acoust. Soc. Am/ 8:14–19. Later investigations, i.e. by A. Cohen, had shown that in most cases the apparent pitch shifts were not significantly different from pitch‐matching errors. When averaged, the remaining shifts followed the directions of Stevens' curves but were small (2% or less by frequency, i.e. not more than a semitone).Cohen, A. (1961). Further investigation of the effects of intensity upon the pitch of pure tones. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 33, 1363–1376. https://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.1908441


Theories of pitch perception

Theories of pitch perception try to explain how the physical sound and specific physiology of the auditory system work together to yield the experience of pitch. In general, pitch perception theories can be divided into place coding and
temporal coding Neural coding (or Neural representation) is a neuroscience field concerned with characterising the hypothetical relationship between the stimulus and the individual or ensemble neuronal responses and the relationship among the electrical activity ...
. Place theory holds that the perception of pitch is determined by the place of maximum excitation on the
basilar membrane The basilar membrane is a stiff structural element within the cochlea of the inner ear which separates two liquid-filled tubes that run along the coil of the cochlea, the scala media and the scala tympani. The basilar membrane moves up and down ...
. A place code, taking advantage of the
tonotopy In physiology, tonotopy (from Greek tono = frequency and topos = place) is the spatial arrangement of where sounds of different frequency are processed in the brain. Tones close to each other in terms of frequency are represented in topologically ...
in the auditory system, must be in effect for the perception of high frequencies, since neurons have an upper limit on how fast they can phase-lock their
action potential An action potential occurs when the membrane potential of a specific cell location rapidly rises and falls. This depolarization then causes adjacent locations to similarly depolarize. Action potentials occur in several types of animal cells ...
s. However, a purely place-based theory cannot account for the accuracy of pitch perception in the low and middle frequency ranges. Moreover, there is some evidence that some non-human primates lack auditory cortex responses to pitch despite having clear tonotopic maps in auditory cortex, showing that tonotopic place codes are not sufficient for pitch responses. Temporal theories offer an alternative that appeals to the temporal structure of action potentials, mostly the phase-locking and
mode-locking Mode locking is a technique in optics by which a laser can be made to produce pulses of light of extremely short duration, on the order of picoseconds (10−12 s) or femtoseconds (10−15 s). A laser operated in this way is sometimes r ...
of action potentials to frequencies in a stimulus. The precise way this temporal structure helps code for pitch at higher levels is still debated, but the processing seems to be based on an
autocorrelation Autocorrelation, sometimes known as serial correlation in the discrete time case, is the correlation of a signal with a delayed copy of itself as a function of delay. Informally, it is the similarity between observations of a random variable ...
of action potentials in the auditory nerve. However, it has long been noted that a neural mechanism that may accomplish a delay—a necessary operation of a true autocorrelation—has not been found. At least one model shows that a temporal delay is unnecessary to produce an autocorrelation model of pitch perception, appealing to
phase shifts In physics and mathematics, the phase of a periodic function F of some real variable t (such as time) is an angle-like quantity representing the fraction of the cycle covered up to t. It is denoted \phi(t) and expressed in such a scale that it ...
between cochlear filters; however, earlier work has shown that certain sounds with a prominent peak in their autocorrelation function do not elicit a corresponding pitch percept, and that certain sounds without a peak in their autocorrelation function nevertheless elicit a pitch. To be a more complete model, autocorrelation must therefore apply to signals that represent the output of the
cochlea The cochlea is the part of the inner ear involved in hearing. It is a spiral-shaped cavity in the bony labyrinth, in humans making 2.75 turns around its axis, the modiolus. A core component of the cochlea is the Organ of Corti, the sensory o ...
, as via auditory-nerve interspike-interval histograms. Some theories of pitch perception hold that pitch has inherent
octave In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been refer ...
ambiguities, and therefore is best decomposed into a pitch ''chroma'', a periodic value around the octave, like the note names in western music—and a pitch ''height'', which may be ambiguous, that indicates the octave the pitch is in.


Just-noticeable difference

The '' just-noticeable difference (jnd)'' (the threshold at which a change is perceived) depends on the tone's frequency content. Below 500 Hz, the jnd is about 3 Hz for sine waves, and 1 Hz for complex tones; above 1000 Hz, the jnd for sine waves is about 0.6% (about 10 cents). The jnd is typically tested by playing two tones in quick succession with the listener asked if there was a difference in their pitches. The jnd becomes smaller if the two tones are played simultaneously as the listener is then able to discern beat frequencies. The total number of perceptible pitch steps in the range of human hearing is about 1,400; the total number of notes in the equal-tempered scale, from 16 to 16,000 Hz, is 120.


Aural illusions

The relative perception of pitch can be fooled, resulting in '' aural illusions''. There are several of these, such as the tritone paradox, but most notably the Shepard scale, where a continuous or discrete sequence of specially formed tones can be made to sound as if the sequence continues ascending or descending forever.


Definite and indefinite pitch

Not all musical instruments make notes with a clear pitch. The unpitched percussion instrument (a class of
percussion instrument A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
) does not produce particular pitches. A sound or note of definite pitch is one where a listener can possibly (or relatively easily) discern the pitch. Sounds with definite pitch have
harmonic A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', t ...
frequency spectra or close to harmonic spectra. A sound generated on any instrument produces many modes of vibration that occur simultaneously. A listener hears numerous frequencies at once. The vibration with the lowest frequency is called the ''
fundamental frequency The fundamental frequency, often referred to simply as the ''fundamental'', is defined as the lowest frequency of a periodic waveform. In music, the fundamental is the musical pitch of a note that is perceived as the lowest partial present. I ...
''; the other frequencies are '' overtones''. ''
Harmonics A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the '' fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', ...
'' are an important class of overtones with frequencies that are integer multiples of the fundamental. Whether or not the higher frequencies are integer multiples, they are collectively called the partials, referring to the different parts that make up the total spectrum. A sound or note of indefinite pitch is one that a listener finds impossible or relatively difficult to identify as to pitch. Sounds with indefinite pitch do not have harmonic spectra or have altered harmonic spectra—a characteristic known as inharmonicity. It is still possible for two sounds of indefinite pitch to clearly be higher or lower than one another. For instance, a
snare drum The snare (or side drum) is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often used ...
sounds higher pitched than a
bass drum The bass drum is a large drum that produces a note of low definite or indefinite pitch. The instrument is typically cylindrical, with the drum's diameter much greater than the drum's depth, with a struck head at both ends of the cylinder. Th ...
though both have indefinite pitch, because its sound contains higher frequencies. In other words, it is possible and often easy to roughly discern the relative pitches of two sounds of indefinite pitch, but sounds of indefinite pitch do not neatly correspond to any specific pitch.


Pitch standards and standard pitch

A pitch standard (also concert pitch) is the conventional pitch reference a group of
musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...
s are tuned to for a performance. Concert pitch may vary from ensemble to ensemble, and has varied widely over musical history. Standard pitch is a more widely accepted convention. The A above
middle C C or Do is the first note and semitone of the C major scale, the third note of the A minor scale (the relative minor of C major), and the fourth note (G, A, B, C) of the Guidonian hand, commonly pitched around 261.63  Hz. The actual fr ...
is usually set at 440 Hz (often written as "A =
440 Hz A440 (also known as Stuttgart pitch) is the musical pitch corresponding to an audio frequency of 440 Hz, which serves as a tuning standard for the musical note of A above middle C, or A4 in scientific pitch notation. It is standardized by th ...
" or sometimes "A440"), although other frequencies, such as 442 Hz, are also often used as variants. Another standard pitch, the so-called ''Baroque pitch'', has been set in the 20th century as A = 415 Hz—approximately an equal-tempered semitone lower than A440 to facilitate transposition. The ''Classical pitch'' can be set to either 427 Hz (about halfway between A415 and A440) or 430 Hz (also between A415 and A440 but slightly sharper than the quarter tone). And ensembles specializing in
authentic performance Historically informed performance (also referred to as period performance, authentic performance, or HIP) is an approach to the performance of classical music, which aims to be faithful to the approach, manner and style of the musical era in whic ...
set the A above middle C to 432 Hz or 435 Hz when performing repertoire from the Romantic era.
Transposing instruments A transposing instrument is a musical instrument for which music notation is not written at concert pitch (concert pitch is the pitch on a non-transposing instrument such as the piano). For example, playing a written middle C on a transposing in ...
have their origin in the variety of pitch standards. In modern times, they conventionally have their parts transposed into different
keys Key or The Key may refer to: Common meanings * Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm * Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock * Key (m ...
from voices and other instruments (and even from each other). As a result, musicians need a way to refer to a particular pitch in an unambiguous manner when talking to each other. For example, the most common type of
clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitch ...
or
trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
, when playing a note written in their part as C, sounds a pitch that is called B on a non-transposing instrument like a violin (which indicates that at one time these wind instruments played at a standard pitch a tone lower than violin pitch). To refer to that pitch unambiguously, a musician calls it ''concert B'', meaning, "...the pitch that someone playing a non-transposing instrument like a violin calls B."


Labeling pitches

Pitches are labeled using: * Letters, as in
Helmholtz pitch notation Helmholtz pitch notation is a system for naming musical notes of the Western chromatic scale. Fully described and normalized by the German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz, it uses a combination of upper and lower case letters (A to G), and th ...
* A combination of letters and numbers—as in
scientific pitch notation Scientific pitch notation (SPN), also known as American standard pitch notation (ASPN) and international pitch notation (IPN), is a method of specifying musical pitch by combining a musical note name (with accidental if needed) and a number id ...
, where notes are labelled upwards from C0, the 16 Hz C * Numbers that represent the frequency in
hertz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that o ...
(Hz), the number of cycles per second For example, one might refer to the A above middle C as ''a′'', ''A4'', or ''440 Hz''. In standard Western
equal temperament An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system, which approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into equal steps. This means the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same, ...
, the notion of pitch is insensitive to "spelling": the description "G4 double sharp" refers to the same pitch as ''A4''; in other temperaments, these may be distinct pitches. Human perception of musical intervals is approximately logarithmic with respect to
fundamental frequency The fundamental frequency, often referred to simply as the ''fundamental'', is defined as the lowest frequency of a periodic waveform. In music, the fundamental is the musical pitch of a note that is perceived as the lowest partial present. I ...
: the perceived interval between the pitches "A220" and "A440" is the same as the perceived interval between the pitches ''A440'' and ''A880''. Motivated by this logarithmic perception, music theorists sometimes represent pitches using a numerical scale based on the logarithm of fundamental frequency. For example, one can adopt the widely used
MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...
standard to map fundamental frequency, ''f'', to a real number, ''p'', as follows : p = 69 + 12\times\log_2 This creates a linear pitch space in which octaves have size 12, semitones (the distance between adjacent keys on the piano keyboard) have size 1, and A440 is assigned the number 69. (See Frequencies of notes.) Distance in this space corresponds to musical intervals as understood by musicians. An equal-tempered semitone is subdivided into 100 cents. The system is flexible enough to include "microtones" not found on standard piano keyboards. For example, the pitch halfway between C (60) and C (61) can be labeled 60.5. The following table shows frequencies in Hertz for notes in various octaves, named according to the "German method" of octave nomenclature:


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 The chromatic scale (or twelve-tone scale) is a set of twelve pitches (more completely, pitch classes) used in tonal music, with notes separated by the interval of a semitone. Chromatic instruments, such as the piano, are made to produce th ...
is the most common method of organization, with
equal temperament An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system, which approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into equal steps. This means the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same, ...
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 Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wo ...
, for example), different methods of
musical tuning In music, there are two common meanings for tuning: * Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice. * Tuning systems, the various systems of pitches used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical bases. Tuning practice Tun ...
were used. In almost all of these systems interval of the
octave In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been refer ...
doubles the frequency of a note; for example, an octave above A440 is 880 Hz. If however the first
overtone An overtone is any resonant frequency above the fundamental frequency of a sound. (An overtone may or may not be a harmonic) In other words, overtones are all pitches higher than the lowest pitch within an individual sound; the fundamental i ...
is sharp due to inharmonicity, as in the extremes of the piano, tuners resort to octave stretching.


Other musical meanings of pitch

In
atonal Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a s ...
, twelve tone, or musical set theory a "pitch" is a specific frequency while a
pitch class In music, a pitch class (p.c. or pc) is a set of all pitches that are a whole number of octaves apart; for example, the pitch class C consists of the Cs in all octaves. "The pitch class C stands for all possible Cs, in whatever octave positio ...
is all the octaves of a frequency. In many analytic discussions of atonal and post-tonal music, pitches are named with
integer An integer is the number zero (), a positive natural number (, , , etc.) or a negative integer with a minus sign ( −1, −2, −3, etc.). The negative numbers are the additive inverses of the corresponding positive numbers. In the languag ...
s because of octave and enharmonic equivalency (for example, in a serial system, C and D are considered the same pitch, while C4 and C5 are functionally the same, one octave apart). Discrete pitches, rather than continuously variable pitches, are virtually universal, with exceptions including " tumbling strains" and "indeterminate-pitch chants". Gliding pitches are used in most cultures, but are related to the discrete pitches they reference or embellish.Burns, Edward M. (1999). "Intervals, Scales, and Tuning", ''The Psychology of Music'', second edition. Deutsch, Diana, ed. San Diego: Academic Press. .


See also

*
3rd bridge The 3rd bridge is an extended playing technique used on the electric guitar and other string instruments that allows a musician to produce distinctive timbres and overtones that are unavailable on a conventional string instrument with two b ...
(harmonic resonance based on equal string divisions) *
Absolute pitch Absolute pitch (AP), often called perfect pitch, is a rare ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note without the benefit of a reference tone. AP may be demonstrated using linguistic labeling ("naming" a note), associating ...
*
Diplacusis Diplacusis, also known as diplacusis binauralis, binauralis disharmonica or interaural pitch difference (IPD), is a hearing disorder whereby a single auditory stimulus is perceived as different pitches between ears. It is typically experienced ...
* Eight foot pitch * Harmonic pitch class profiles *
Just intonation In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals as whole number ratios (such as 3:2 or 4:3) of frequencies. An interval tuned in this way is said to be pure, and is called a just interval. Just intervals (and ...
*
Meantone temperament Meantone temperament is a musical temperament, that is a tuning system, obtained by narrowing the fifths so that their ratio is slightly less than 3:2 (making them ''narrower'' than a perfect fifth), in order to push the thirds closer to pure. M ...
* Music and mathematics *
Piano key frequencies This is a list of the fundamental frequencies in hertz (cycles per second) of the keys of a modern 88-key standard or 108-key extended piano in twelve-tone equal temperament, with the 49th key, the fifth A (called A4), tuned to 440 Hz (refe ...
* Pitch circularity *
Pitch class In music, a pitch class (p.c. or pc) is a set of all pitches that are a whole number of octaves apart; for example, the pitch class C consists of the Cs in all octaves. "The pitch class C stands for all possible Cs, in whatever octave positio ...
*
Pitch detection algorithm Pitch may refer to: Acoustic frequency * Pitch (music), the perceived frequency of sound including "definite pitch" and "indefinite pitch" ** Absolute pitch or "perfect pitch" ** Pitch class, a set of all pitches that are a whole number of octav ...
* Pitch of brass instruments *
Pitch shifter Pitch shifting is a sound recording technique in which the original pitch of a sound is raised or lowered. Effects units that raise or lower pitch by a pre-designated musical interval ( transposition) are called pitch shifters. Pitch and ti ...
* Pitch pipe * Relative pitch * Scale of vowels * Vocal and instrumental pitch ranges


References


Further reading

* Moore, B.C. & Glasberg, B.R. (1986) "Thresholds for Hearing Mistuned Partials as Separate Tones in Harmonic Complexes". ''Journal of the Acoustical Society of America'', 80, 479–83. * Parncutt, R. (1989). ''Harmony: A Psychoacoustical Approach''. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1989. * Schneider, P.; Sluming, V.; Roberts, N.; Scherg, M.; Goebel, R.; Specht, H.-J.; Dosch, H.G.; Bleeck, S.; Stippich, C.; Rupp, A. (2005). "Structural and Functional Asymmetry of Lateral Heschl's Gyrus Reflects Pitch Perception Preference". ''Nat. Neurosci.'' 8, 1241–47. * Terhardt, E., Stoll, G. and Seewann, M. (1982). "Algorithm for Extraction of Pitch and Pitch Salience from Complex Tonal Signals". ''Journal of the Acoustical Society of America'', 71, 679–88.


External links

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