Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Frequency of Piano Keys

During the first few weeks of this class we studied frequency. Frequency is the rate at which vibrations occur in waves and are usually measured per second, which are called Hertz. If you have a string with a certain frequency and you cut it in half, the frequency would be multiplied by two and this will continue forever because as the string gets smaller by halves the frequency doubles.These are called octaves. When a string is divided into thirds, it forms a musical interval called a fifth.  A standard modern piano has 88 keys and one way of determining all their frequencies is to use octaves and fifths.  We used this method to calculate the frequencies for every note of the piano. Although this is the simplest method, it has some problems and musicians usually use a different method to tune a piano.  

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