What is Pitch? | Hyperlinks clicked on this page open a new window, which may refer to demonstration features, such as buttons to play music, which are contained on another screen. Please refer to the menu sequence at the foot of that new window, if you wish to go to that other screen. |
Pitch means the highness or lowness of a note or musical tone. It depends on the frequency (or vibrations per second, or Hertz or Hz) of the string, pipe, or other device generating the sound. Letter names A, B, C up to G are used in music to represent notes of different pitches. Click the red button at top left to listen to a low pitched note played on the double bass, or the blue button for a high pitch on the flute.
An international standard called "Concert Pitch" has been set, in which A is set to 440 Hz. Try listening to this note (played on the oboe) by clicking the grey button Concert Pitch A at top left. All other pitches can be tuned by reference to this standard note. A piano tuner uses a tuning fork, or an equivalent modern electronic device, to get the A above middle C tuned exactly correctly to this frequency. Then he can adjust all the other notes by comparing them the this A. When an orchestra 'tunes up' before a concert performance, usually the leading oboist plays this same A, and all the other players tune their instruments against this A.
Can you tell the difference between high and low notes? Test yourself by clicking the pink button, then the green one, to hear two notes, then click one of the three option buttons to indicate if Pink was higher than green, or vice-versa, or that both pitches were the same. Please remember that these notes will be played on different instruments, selected at random from the set of favourite instruments.
Men have deeper voices than women, in other words, the pitch range of male singers is lower than that of females. The pitch of a young boy's voice is higher than that of a man. There are grey buttons on the left to demonstrate the ranges of men's and women's voices.
On a piano keyboard, the pitch of notes gets higher as you strike keys to the right, lower as you move to the left. Try the 'Pitch going up' or 'pitch going down' buttons to hear this on a piano.
On a
stringed instrument such as the violin,
thicker strings make lower pitches, so the four strings get thinner as you go
from the lowest (the leftmost string which is the G string), to the D, the A and
finally up to the highest string, the E string. You can hear the 4 violin
'open' strings by clicking on the 4 buttons in the last but one panel on the
left. Violinists 'tune' their
instruments by altering the tension of the strings, using the pegs at the neck
of the violin. For a given thickness, a higher tension will generate a higher
note. For a given thickness and tension, shorter strings make higher notes. On a
given string, the player can 'stop' a string with the fingers of his left
hand to shorten it, thereby sounding a higher note. The further towards the
bridge of the violin that the string is 'stopped', the higher the note obtained.
Longer columns of air
vibrating in pipes generate deeper pitched notes. So the deepest organ
pipes are also the thickest and longest. On wind instruments such as the flute,
clarinet and oboe,
the pipe is effectively shortened by uncovering holes towards the far end of the
instrument, in order to sound higher pitched notes. Brass instruments with
valves, such as the trumpet,
the tuba, and the French
Horn, produce lower pitched notes by opening valves which make the air pass
through extra loops of tubing, lengthening the pipe and air column. The trombone
achieves lengthening to obtain lower pitched notes by extending a slide. You can
listen to these wind instruments by clicking the 6 buttons in the lowest
panel on the left.