Let’s take the C major scale as an example: It’s considered the foundation of Western music. Unlike the chromatic scale, the major scale is widely used in all music genres. For example, moving a whole step (or whole tone) from D will take us to E, and moving a whole step from D# will take us to F. The other way to move between the notes is by skipping one note and landing on the next one. This is known as a half step or semitone. The first is to go one interval at a time, like from A to A# or from E to F. There are two ways to move between the notes and up/down an octave. We play the chromatic scale by sounding all 12 notes in order. The chromatic scale doesn’t sound particularly pleasing to the ear, but you can still hear it in some guitar solos and classical compositions. To sum up, here are the 12 notes of an octave: All that remains now are the five sharp notes that lay in between the A# (Bb), C# (Db), D# (Eb), F# (Gb), G# (Ab).Īccording to music theory, a sharp note may be called a flat in some scales. So far, we’ve covered seven pitches that comprise an octave from A to G. At what frequency does the note A7 vibrate? The 12 Notes of an Octave (The Chromatic Scale) Pop quiz! The note A8, at the very end of the piano, vibrates at 7040 Hz. Similarly, E7 vibrates at 2637.02 Hz while E6 vibrates at 1318.51 Hz. To put this into perspective, the note A0 vibrates at 27.50 Hz while A1 vibrates at 55 Hz. It’s an interval between two keys that carry the same note but vibrate at a different frequency.Ī note that’s one octave higher will vibrate at double the frequency, while a note that’s one octave lower will vibrate at half the frequency. This is because note A1 is exactly one octave above note A0. If you play note A0 followed by note A1, you’ll notice that A1 has a higher pitch than A0. To better understand what an octave is, let’s leave out the black keys for now and focus on the white ones.įrom left to right, the order of the white keys goes like this: Octave Equivalence What Is an Octave in Music?Ī grand piano has 88 keys 52 white keys and 36 black keys.

Octave music definition