Lesson 2: Pitch

Pitch

If you’ve listened to music, you’ve probably noticed that some sounds are higher and some sounds are lower. Essentially, this is pitch. Pitch is the frequency of a sound, and it relates to the highness or lowness of a tone that we hear. If you have an elastic or rubber band, try hooking one side of the band to a stationary object such as a nail and hold the other end, drawing the band out a little bit. Then pluck or hit the band. What did it sound like? Does the sound differ if you hit the band softly versus if you hit it with more force? Does the sound differ if you hit the band quickly versus if you hit it slowly? You may notice that the faster the band vibrates, the higher the tone that is produced from the band. Slower vibrations or frequencies create lower tones. While we often talk about pitch in terms of frequencies, we should note that pitch is not the same as frequency when we are discussing music. This is because musical pitch is subjective in the sense that two people may perceive a pitch differently depending on their direction.

In the West, there are typically twelve different pitches used in music. An easy way to conceptualize these twelve pitches is to think of seven white keys on a piano and the five black keys that are between them. If you imagine the piano keyboard again, you may note that there are many more keys than just twelve. The cycle of these twelve keys is repeated on the keyboard a number of times. The repetition of these twelve pitches is known as an octave.

A scale is a group of notes in ascending and descending pitch. We often see the C scale referred to when we are talking about music. You may be familiar with the syllables that we sometimes use to sing a scale: Do, Re, Me, Fa, So (or Sol), La, Ti, Do. If you were to sing these syllables along with the ascending notes, you would have sung a scale.