Frequency
The harmonies Pythagoras was talking about were undoubtedly octaves,
the same note repeated at a higher pitch.
Nowadays, this pattern can be observed in the frequencies of the
various musical notes. The note musicians call Middle C has a frequency of 262Hz.
The C an octave above Middle C has a frequency of 524Hz, a ratio of 2:1. In
fact, all C's are successively double or half the frequency of Middle C.
The pattern continues for any octave interval no matter what
interval is chosen, e.g. the ratio of the frequencies of two G's an octave apart is 2:1.
This leads to a convenient mathematical way of writing the frequency of any musical
note using the table below:
Frequencies of
some musical notes |
| Note |
Frequency |
Note |
Frequency |
| C |
262 |
F#/Gb |
370 |
| C#/Db |
277 |
G |
392 |
| D |
294 |
G#/Ab |
415 |
| D#/Eb |
311 |
A |
440 |
| E |
330 |
A#/Bb |
466 |
| F |
349 |
B |
495 |
All C's for example can be written as 262x2n
where n is an integer.
