Years ago I heard that the way music works is that Middle C is 256 Hertz.
Later I think it changed to A is 440 Hertz.

Please see: https://www.binauralbeatsmeditation.com … -frequency

No, middle C is middle C (256 Hz or 261.62 Hz, or whatever).

The interval from middle C to the G above it (C-D-E-F-G) is a fifth; i.e. a sequence of five consecutive notes.

I don't know which instruments are being played here, but while you can play the same notes on say a clarinet, and a bassoon, the bassoon plays them in a lower register.

Years ago I heard that the way music works is that Middle C is 256 Hertz.

Later I think it changed to A is 440 Hertz.

If I remember correctly, 440 Hertz was the tone broadcast on at least some television channels a while after close down so as to remind people to turn off the television set, which is practice meant that the tone woke up a person who had gone to sleep in an armchair while watching television.

So, does what Geoff wrote mean that, say, middle C is a different frequency on a clarinet than on a bassoon?

Something that has puzzled me about music.

Is that 440 Hertz a more or less arbitrary standard, chosen rather than being like, say, whether a certain number is or is not a prime number?

I can easily imagine that an octave is a natural phenomenon that is applied in music.

However, is there a reason why there are a certain number of notes in an octave, rather than some other number, and why the black notes on a piano are some of them and not others?

I remember from school that a lady music teacher would say about fourths and fifths and demonstrate with a piano.

She used to give us tests where she would play two notes and we had to write down the, I think she might have called it the interval.

A fourth and a fifth in music seemed to be different from a fourth and a fifth in mathematics, but maybe I was missing something.

Is it that, like for some people red and green look the same, that for some people it is not possible to distinguish those distances between notes?

I can usually tell that one note is a higher pitch than another, but that is about it. I don't think that I can detect that something is an octave in difference.

Maybe to some (most?) people, the difference between a fourth and a fifth is as obvious as the difference of red and green is to me.

William

I don't know which instruments are being played here, but while you can play the same notes on say a clarinet, and a bassoon, the bassoon plays them in a lower register.

According to the Wikipedia article, the notes are played on an ARP 2500 (monophonic synthesizer).

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

The term “register” as applied to music can refer to various things, but in the present context I’m essentially talking about pitch.

Listening again to the clip on the Wikipedia page, I find that I misspoke. I had asserted that “the entire sequence” is shifted to a lower register, but actually only the last two notes of the repeated phrase are at a lower pitch than the original; the first three are exactly the same as before.

What is a register please?

Is that shifting to a lower register part of the movie? If so, is that of some significance?

William

I am puzzled as to why the audio file, when played, has two five note sequences, when the notation has five notes.

I am not very good at all with musical note identification but the sequences sound different from each other to me.

They sound different because they are! The first one is as written on the stave in the article; the intervals in the second one are the same, but the entire sequence is shifted to a lower register.

Apparently there is more to it than just five musical notes used in a movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_Enc … Kind#Music

I am puzzled as to why the audio file, when played, has two five note sequences, when the notation has five notes.

I am not very good at all with musical note identification but the sequences sound different from each other to me.

I have found this.

https://www.ars-nova.com/Theory%20Q&A/Q35.html

The following is very interesting.

https://musictales.club/article/five-to … n-language

There is menrtion of the Kodaly system of which I have never known before. If it was mentioned in the movie I did not notice it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kod%C3%A1ly_method

Searching for

Kodaly method

on YouTube provides lots of links.

William