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What is Pitch?

Did you know…

Everything that deals with melody, harmony and scales starts with pitch?

When talking about pitch in music, the word is generally used to describe whether a note is ‘high’ or ‘low’ sounding, but what does this actually mean?


A definition of Pitch:

Pitch, in music, is the position of a single sound in the complete range of sound. Sounds are higher or lower in pitch according to the frequency of vibration of the sound waves producing them.


The pitch of a note can be measured in a unit called Hertz. A high frequency (for example, 900 hertz) is seen as a high pitch, and a low frequency (for example, 40 hertz) is seen as a low pitch.


This may sound rather technical, but just try to picture it like this:

Pitch is how the human ear hears and understands the frequency of a note: The higher the frequency, the higher the pitch and, the lower the frequency, the lower the pitch.


Pitch and Instruments

We thought we would round up this post with to facts about pitch and instruments, so here they are:

1.Not all musical instruments give notes of a particular pitch. Many percussion instruments like drums and shakers are instruments used for rhythms and do not play tunes because they have no definite pitch.

And on the piano...

The note Middle C on the piano (in terms of frequency) is a note that is vibrating at 256 Hertz!



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