Why Are There Only 12 Pitch Notes (C, C#, ..

3/7/2016
Why are there only 12 pitch notes (C, C#, ..., B) in the world? - Quora
Ask or Search Quora
Ask Question
Read
Answer
Notifications
Pramod
Music
Why are there only 12 pitch notes (C, C#, ..., B) in the
world?
I learned that pitch is determined by frequency of the sound waves. I know that each note
has specific frequency Hz. For example, C3 is 130.8Hz and C#3 is 138.6. So what the
heck is between those two pitch notes? If there are so many pitches between these halfstep notes, how come it feels like a...(more)
Answer
Request
Follow 32
Comment Share 1
Downvote
12 Answers
Lukas Biewald, founder, CrowdFlower
32.3k Views
This is a fascinating question and I went down a long rabbit hole researching and thinking
about it - including talking to Tim who also has a great answer here.
First of all - let's cover some basic stuff. What is frequency?
Here is the sound wave of a recording of me playing the low E string on my guitar.
There's more on Quora...

Pick new people and topics to follow and see the
best answers on Quora.
Update Your Interests
Related Questions
Why are there 12 notes in an octave, and why do we
ascribe the specific frequencies that we do to them?
Is there any reason that music has only 12 notes and
not more?
Music Theory:Is there any good reason the note 'C'
is not called 'A'?
Why is there no E# or B# black note? Why are there
only eight notes?
How does the pitch of a C-note vary on different
instruments?
Why are some common brass instruments pitched in
B flat not C?
Why do we see 3 primary colors (Red, Green, Blue)
but distinguish between 12 musical notes/pitches?
Which notes does a C#min7b5 chord contain?
What are the notes in a C7 chord?
What's the name of the song from spongebob that
starts with the notes E A D D C# B A E E A F# E D E?
More Related Questions
Question Stats
32 Followers
37,954 Views
Last Asked Oct 17
Edits
There are multiple oscillations happening here and you can what's called a Fourier
transform to figure out how much of each frequency there is.
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-only-12-pitch-notes-C-C-B-in-the-world
1/9
3/7/2016
You can see that there are multiple frequencies in this sound, but the strongest frequency
is at around 82 Hertz or 82 oscillations per second. We perceive this sound as a low E
note.
If I play the next higher E note on my guitar the dominant frequency is twice as high (164
Hz). If I play the next higher E the dominant frequency doubles again.
Here the x axis is the perceived pitch or note and the y-axis is the frequencies. Each A note
is an octave apart but the frequency is doubling each time.
The perceived pitch difference between two frequencies goes down as the frequencies go
up. Another way of saying this is the frequencydifferencebetweentwonotesgets
furtherapartasthenotesgethigher.
Here's a little illustration of that with the real frequencies of notes.
A scale is generally divided into even pitch increments (this is called "equal
temperament"). This means that the ratio of the frequency of a note and the frequency of
2/9
3/7/2016
the next note is always the same.

So why 12 intervals?
There's a second fact about the way we perceive sound which is thattwosoundswitha
simplefrequencyratiosoundgood. There is a lot of fascinating research about when
and why this is true - I really enjoyed Music, A Mathematical Offering by Dave Benson that
goes really deep into how our ear works and why we perceive sound the way we do. But
let's take this as given.
For example two notes an octave apart have a frequency ratio of 2:1 and they sound very
resonant.
Besides an octave, the simplest possible ratio is 3:2 - halfway to the next octave. It's the
basis of all the most common chords and it's really nice to have this ratio in a scale. But if
we want to evenly space the pitch of our notes, we will never get exactly this nice ratio.
For example if we have 6 notes we don't even get close.
Starting at note "0", we have no note in our scale that is anywhere near halfway to the next
octave.
But if we use twelve notes we happen to get really close.
Note number 7 happens to be almost exactly halfway between our root note zero and the
next octave higher.
This turns out to really just be a happy coincidence. For fun I graphed all the possible
3/9
3/7/2016
scales between one and 24 notes.
It turns out 12 notes happens to have a note that is way closer to the halfway point than
any other number of notes. When we get to 24 notes the same note shows up.
Another way of looking at this is just plotting how close each scale gets to the halfway
note. This "halfway note" is extremely confusingly often called a "fifth" in music.
... (more)
Upvote 206
Downvote Comments 6+
Tim Converse, Know-it-all wannabe

5.7k Views
I'm interpreting the question this way: why the heck should there be exactly *twelve*
pitches (in most Western music and on many Western instruments (e.g. piano)), when the
spectrum of frequencies is continuous?
There is a genuinely non-arbitrary reason for twelve pitches, though it takes some
explaining (and, as we'll see, a worldwide conspiracy spanning hundreds of years(!) and
the collaboration of none other than J.S. Bach!).
Starting point: human perception of harmony between two tones is surprisingly
arithmetic, meaning that the closer two tones come to having a simple ratio of frequencies,
the more "harmonious" (or consonant) the two tones sound.
So let's build a scale by starting with one tone and adding more and more tones that are
"harmonious" with the ones already in the scale.
The simplest first addition is the octave - for example. play middle-C on the piano along
with the C one octave above that. In this case the higher note has a frequency exactly twice
the lower note. Two tones that are separated by an octave sound so harmonious that many
people would describe them as "the same note" even though one is higher than the other.
If octaves have a 2:1 ratio of frequency, the next simplest ratio to try is 3:2 (a perfect fifth),
and the next one (greater than one) after that is 4:3 (a perfect fourth). If we start with
middle C on the piano, then the perfect fifth corresponds (roughly) to G above middle C
and the fourth corresponds to F above middle C.
Note that fourths and fifths are kind of inverses of each other: take the 4:3 ratio of the
fourth, divide the frequency by 2, and you get 2:3. Multiply that by 3:2 and we are back to
our starting point. In other words: go up by a fourth, then go down by an octave, then go
up by a fifth and you are back to the start. (This is already most of the way toward
explaining why I-IV-V chords are so pervasive in popular music.) Also notice the frequency
difference between the fourth and fifth in terms of the start note: 3/2 - 4/3 = (9-8)/6 = 1/6,
which is twice 1/12. Hmm.
So imagine that we have a scale comprised only of start tone, fourth, fifth and octave. How
should we expand the scale to include more notes?
4/9
3/7/2016
Let's suppose that we work outwards from the three notes we already have in our scale,
and successively add notes that are "harmonious" with the notes we already have (i.e. have
a perfect-fourth or perfect-fifth relationship with them), and taking octave relationships as
equivalent.
Now, there is no point in taking a note that we reached by a fifth from a previous note in
the set and then adding the fourth of that second note, because we will have just added the
octave of that very first note. Instead, let's see how far we can get by adding fifths and
dividing by 2 when we feel like it (since that just drops us down an octave).
It turns out that if we take a note and raise its frequency by a ratio of 3:2 twelve times in a
row, then this happens:
(3/2)^12 =
129.746 ~=
1.013 x 2^7
In other words, it takes 12 steps around what is called the "Circle of Fifths" until you reach
an approximate power of two of the original tone (meaning some number of octaves above
it).
If you're looking for the simplest explanation for why piano scales have the magic number
of 12 steps between octaves, this would be it.
On the piano, the Circle of Fifths looks like this: C, G, D, A, E, B, F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, F, C
(treating all black keys as sharps). And there we have all the twelve tones on the piano.
Now all this doesn't *quite* add up, because the power of two is only approximate. So to
make it all add up let's, um, slightly detune the piano so that perfect fifths are *just* a little
bit less than a 3:2 ratio, so that when we go up by fifths twelve times, instead of
1.013 x 2^7, we get
1.000 x 2^7
so that after 12 steps we end up right back at our starting tone (dropping down octaves
when appropriate).
To make this all work, let's not only detune the piano and other instruments (to pretend
that 1.013 == 1.000), let's have a *worldwide* *conspiracy* to detune all instruments
*everywhere*. And let's keep it going over hundreds of years, and enlist none other than
Johann Sebastian Bach to make musical arguments on our behalf (see: The WellTempered Clavier )..... I am not kidding.
To recap, the simplest explanation why there are twelve tones you hear all the time is: 3/2
to the 12th power is approximately 2 to the 7th power.
=====
Update: my answer above applies to equal-tempering (where every step up on the piano
corresponds to the same multiple of frequency of the step below it). This is not quite what
Bach was pushing for (he wanted well-tempering), and my answer makes it sound like
'well' and 'equal' are the same thing.
See Well v.s. equal temperament
Updated Mar 2, 2015 View Upvotes
Upvote 45
Downvote Comments 3
Malcolm Zachariah, Flutist since 2000, oboist for a few years, singer since I was
a child (at le...
1.1k Views
Various methods of dividing the octave
5/9
3/7/2016
Actually, there are semitones in Western tonal music, which are between each note (e.g.
one tone halfway between C and C#).
Semitone
Then there are microtones of even smaller intervals. Many non-Western Classical music
genres use them.
Microtonal music
In fact, there are 72 tones in Byzantine music theory, dividing the octave into twelfthtones.
Turkish microtonal guitar
Written Mar 2, 2015 View Upvotes

Upvote
Downvote Comment 1
Milind Bhandarkar, parallel programmer, hadoop evangelist, distributed systems

student
2.1k Views
North Indian (Hindustani) Classical music has evolved over the years to include 12 notes
per "Saptak" (octave). This includes soft notes of rishabh, gandhar, dhaivat, and nishad;
plus hard madhyam, along with the seven "pure" notes.
But south of the Vindhyas, music had already evolved beyond 12 notes per octave, and
indeed 22 shrutis (notes) per octave is the norm there. Even in Hindustani music, in some
of the raagas, there is a rule about taking the higher one of the madhyam. Or a lower one of
the Komal Rushabh, that corresponds to the shrutis.
So, 22 tones per octave seems to me the thinnest granularization so far. Not 12.
Written Dec 15, 2012 View Upvotes
Upvote 10
Downvote Comment 1
Ben Hendel
1.5k Views
You are right in that there are infinite pitches. SImply whistle and steadily increase the
pitch, or listen to a trombone glissando and you hear all of them. However, music becomes
much simpler to write and notate if we apply some limits. Throughout the renaissance,
people developed different tuning systems for this purpose before one, known as Equal
Temperament, was almost universally adopted in the Western World. In Equal
Temperament, 12 pitches are established from the octave, each with an equal (perceived)
distance. Thus the amount of these half-steps defines the interval (two is M2, three is m3,
four is M3, and so on). Just look at a piano and you will see this. There exists a note
between the half-step known as the quarter tone. It has its own notation, and is used
sparingly in Western music. The only example I can think of is in blues, where a vocal
effect bends the pitch of the third degree of the scale down a quarter-tone. Eastern musical
scales, however, are loaded with strategically placed quarter tones, giving them a
characteristic flavor. In general, the difference between semitone and quarter-tone is not
firmly established in the ear so they are infrequent outside of avant-garde and eastern
music.
Upvote
Downvote Comment 1
6/9
3/7/2016
Kent Reed, Musician
1.2k Views
As others have suggested, the premise of your question is incorrect. In Arabic, Turkish,
Persian, and Indian music, there are well-developed systems of more than 12 notes in an
octave.
If you want to know why there are 12 notes to the octave in Western music, the Tim
Converse's answer above is a good one as to how that became the consensus on a practical
limit.
Two caveats:
even in Western music, there are many more pitches used, it is only the equal-tempered
instruments that are restricted to 12 pitch classes.
There are many more than 12 pitch names (A#, Bb, D#, Eb, F#, Gb, Fx, Abb, etc), and for
good reasons. This hints at the fact that the 12 pitches are a convention that is arrived at
for practical reasons (it is impractical to have 40 keys or frets per octave), not for any
inherent musical reason. On an instrument with more or less continuously variable pitch,
one is not restricted to 12 pitches and may well play a Gb as a distinct pitch from an F#.
Written May 13, 2014 View Upvotes
Upvote
Downvote Comment
Nikhil Singh, Musician and Producer

802 Views
The simplest answer is that there aren't! There is a lot of microtonal music in the world,
and it's very sad to me that people think music is limited to 12ET. Of course there are very
good reasons behind 12ET and it's a brilliant system, but it is not at all the only one in the
world.
24ET and 53ET are common in maqam music, and they both yield some absolutely
wonderful sounds. There's western microtonal music that can use 72ET and more. There is
non-equal-tempered music, of course, especially historically. There are instruments that
aren't equal-tempered. There is a lot outside of modern western music in this regard.
Written Mar 6, 2015
Upvote
Downvote Comment
Daniel Debie, Data Engineer @ The New Motion

721 Views
Although Tim Converse's answer holds an interesting story on how equal-tempered tuning
came into being, I feel that it doesn't necessarily answer the question why we identify all
pitches we hear on this 12-tone scale.
I'd say that this is purely for cultural reasons. In the Western world we are used to dividing
an octave in 12 semi-tones, but in other parts of the world, such as Iran and the Arab
world, they make a lot of use of quarter tones [1] in their music, and musicians from those
parts are also trained to hear the difference between quarter-tones.
Interestingly, such music cannot be reproduced on all instruments that are prevalent in
Western music, because some instruments are closely tied to the 12 semi-tone system
(such as a piano). Playing quarter tones requires the instrument to be able to produce
pitches on a continuous scale.
One more interesting tidbit about equal-tempered tuning: one reason it was invented, is
that by adhering to pure mathematical ratios, it becomes impossible to transpose a piece of
music to any key. This makes it hard for instance, for a singer to sing a song that - in its
original key - is too high or low to reach, because you can't just transpose it. This was
especially noticeable on organs, because they are built with these exact mathematical ratios
in mind (pipes' lengths are related to each other). When you transpose a piece of music in
this old "mathematical" tuning, it sounds increasingly "out of tune", in certain keys. Equaltemperament solves this problem.
[1] Quarter tone
Written Mar 6, 2015
Upvote
Downvote Comment
Benjamin Keilty, Music lover

654 Views
There aren't. However, only 12 notes are used in the modern Western tuning system, 12tone Equal Temperament, or 12TET. 12TET was probably first developed because of the
7/9
3/7/2016
piano. Using more keys, while making the piano able to hit better tuned intervals, would
make the piano a daunting instrument to play, and a full piano would either have
infinitesimally small keys, multiple layers, or would be in excess of 15 feet wide. All of these
would not be feasible to play. As such, most other instruments (and virtually all with
valves, keys, or frets) were made to play in 12TET. Other instruments, though, such as the
trombone and orchestra string instruments, can play other temperaments with relative
ease, even though for most instruments, due to their design, 12TET is the only easy (or
sometimes the only possible) system to use. However, other tuning temperaments are
used, such as 17TET, where notes are divided into 3 instead of 2 and C# and Db are not
enharmonic, and 22TET, where notes are divided into four and quarter steps are used.
34TET, 55TET, 5TET, and many more are used. There are many different tuning
temperaments that are not equal temperament, such as Pythagorean tuning, in which
justly tune fifths are also used. If you want to know more, Wikipedia, for once, has fairly
reliable information because this knowledge is common enough that many know about it,
but not cared about enough to be vandalized.
So, in conclusion, music is not limited to 12 tones, but they and their octaves are the only
ones you will usually hear, due to instrument design and the simplicity and widespread
usage of 12TET.
Written Mar 15, 2015
Upvote
Downvote Comment
Naveen Vijayan
1.4k Views
It is true that the western system has only 12 semitones in notation and they are equally
tempered (separated with an equal pitch). But if you listen closely to the violin or vocals
youd realize that frequencies in between the semitones are present too. They were pianos
that were in production earlier with special pedals that could vary the pitch of the notes so
that you could obtain microtones (tones in between 2 semitones). But this made music
highly complex, and most ears were not accustomed to this special addition to the piano.
If you look at music around the world, you do find music in which an octave is divided into
more or less than 12 notes. In the Chinese system you have the 5, 7 and 12 note octaves
which of equal temperament. The Indian classical music system uses a moveable sevennote scale with intervals smaller or greater than a semitone.
The tuning of musical instruments to A440, which is tuning the A note to a frequency of
440Hz came into practice only after the standardization of pitch. Earlier in time, the A
note was tuned to a wide frequency around 440Hz and a lot of instruments were tuned to
435 Hz, which was then recommended by the Austrian government.
If you have the opportunity to ever come across pianos or other instruments that are quite
old, (150 years or more) youd realize that the A note is tuned to a slightly different pitch.
These instruments were not usually upgraded to the A440 convention as the frame of the
instrument would generally not be able to handle the additional stress.
Upvote
Downvote Comment 1
Heerdyes Mahapatro, programmer

536 Views
a great question!
there is a fascinating section on the musical scale in P. D. Ouspensky's book In Search of
the Miraculous. excerpt 1:
The seven tone scale is the formula of a cosmic law which was worked out by ancient
schools and applied to music.
it mentions ratios that are uneven (not equal temperament) thus:
1, 9/8, 5/4, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, 15/8, 2/1, from C(n) to C(n+1).
the differences are: 1/8, 1/8, 1/12, 1/6, 1/6, 5/24, 1/8
moreover the book also mentions that each octave contains inner octaves, suggesting that
there are 7 notes between all of these seven notes. and so on for those inner octaves ad
infinitum.
links:
Inner Octaves and Eastern Music
Fourth Way enneagram
8/9
3/7/2016
music is indeed sublime!

Written Mar 8, 2015
Upvote
Downvote Comment
Charles Rogers
1.1k Views
There are other pitches of other frequencies in the World. "Eastern" music on "Esatern
instruments have notes and scales characteristic to their "songs". The pitches we are
accustomed to, evolved with a Weatern, if not European cultures and instruments were
constructed for our "do, re, mi..." Pattern. Some 20th Century compositions forces a
Western instruments to make sounds inbetween our notes. Electric guitar rock artist slide
around in these "spaces" (frequencies). I have two sons; each have Master's of Music
Degrees; one from Boston Conservatory, the other from Peabody Inst JounsHopkins.
Teachers and composers.
Written Nov 9
Upvote
Downvote Comment
Top Stories from Your Feed

Soniya Lunawat upvoted this Feb 24
What are some of the simplest yet

amazing innovations?
Popular on Quora
What is the creepiest thing your

spouse has ever done?
Richa Naja Jain, Physics major at

Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Sasha Reptova, ..kissed lots of frogs

before finding a prince...
93k Views Upvoted by Soniya Lunawat
500k Views Upvoted by Cia Oberoi, Story

teller.
I just asked my boyfriend if I've ever done

anything creepy. Boyfriend: "Doyou
rememberthatonetimewehadafightand
Iwenttothelivingroomtocalmdownand
youstayedinthebedroomonyour...
Jeevan Bindi or life saving Dot : Asymbol

ofbeautyandameanstofightIodine
Read In Feed
deficiency.
Thousands of Indian women
Read In Feed
Soniya Lunawat upvoted this answer from

2015 Fri
What advice should have been

given to students who will be
attending college for the first
time?
Ashutosh Parauha, I practice live and
let live
317.2k Views Upvoted by Emma
Saboureau, Student, Soniya Lunawat
Read In Feed
9/9

Why Are There Only 12 Pitch Notes (C, C#, ..

Încărcat de

Informații document

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Why Are There Only 12 Pitch Notes (C, C#, ..

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

3/7/2016

There's more on Quora...

the next note is always the same.

scales between one and 24 notes.

Tim Converse, Know-it-all wannabe

Various methods of dividing the octave

Written Mar 2, 2015 View Upvotes

Milind Bhandarkar, parallel programmer, hadoop evangelist, distributed systems

Nikhil Singh, Musician and Producer

Daniel Debie, Data Engineer @ The New Motion

Benjamin Keilty, Music lover

Heerdyes Mahapatro, programmer

music is indeed sublime!

Top Stories from Your Feed

What are some of the simplest yet

What is the creepiest thing your

Richa Naja Jain, Physics major at

Sasha Reptova, ..kissed lots of frogs

93k Views Upvoted by Soniya Lunawat

500k Views Upvoted by Cia Oberoi, Story

I just asked my boyfriend if I've ever done

Jeevan Bindi or life saving Dot : Asymbol

Thousands of Indian women

Soniya Lunawat upvoted this answer from

What advice should have been

S-ar putea să vă placă și