[castleofargh]

that chart is also my favorite and I almost learned how to understand EQ with it as guide over the years. the complete stuff with mostly redundant descriptions is here:
http://www.independentrecording.net/irn/resources/freqchart/main_display.htm

 

[megabigeye]

Wow. That's cool. Bookmarked!

 

[bigshot]

I do agree with Bigshot's general point especially at the high frequency end of things, just picking at the detail there.

I'm used to that!

I've never figured out what the black bars represent. Perhaps Gregorio knows. Masking?

 

[SoundAndMotion]

I've never figured out what the black bars represent.

The legend is in the lower right corner of @castleofargh 's link above:

 

[Slaphead]

If you're calling a doubling in frequency (eg 10kHz to 20kHz) an octave then that is 8 notes, not 7 (the clue is in the name). (It's 7 intervals, but they are not equally spaced - or it is 12 equal semitone intervals in Western music convention.) I do agree with Bigshot's general point especially at the high frequency end of things, just picking at the detail there. I agree the difference between 15kHz and 20kHz is hardly worth bothering about in real life, let alone anything higher.

A Bosendorfer Imperial Grand piano (as played by Oscar Peterson) has a bottom note of C0 which is 16.35Hz. Most grands (88 keys) bottom out at A0 which is 27.5Hz, a note which features quite a bit in some of Philip Glass' Piano Etudes, most recordings don't reproduce it very well. Some synthesized music can extend well below even 10Hz and yet, if there is high harmonic content the subsonic fundamental 'note' can easily be heard. An example is at the end of Bjork's 'Thunderbolt' from her Biophilia album.

Actually it's 12 notes for an entire octave - from, say, C to B - that would be the chromatic scale. The diatonic scale, of which there are seven modes, and each have 7 notes per octave, and then you have the pentatonic scale, which is a subset of the given diatonic scale which consists of only 5 notes per octave, Then there's the whole tone scale (Hexatonic) which has 6 notes per octave. And then you've also got accidentals and jazz scales which means that all bets are off.

On top of that you have equal temperament, which applies to pianos, keyboards, fretted strings, and generally wind instruments, and then you have "just intonation" which applies mostly to un-fretted string instruments (and clever wind players) although they can also play in equal temperament - the difference between the two is that the intervals are slightly different and more natural with "just intonation"

The 8 notes (octave) comes from the diatonic scale when you go from, for example, C to C - basically two of the notes (C) are exactly the same musically, but one is double the frequency of the other.

 

[bigshot]

yeah, and all that stuff too

 

[what?]

20 hz ***sounds like**** driving past telephone posts on a freeway... no need to drop $$ into producing that sound accurately

 

[megabigeye]

20 hz ***sounds like**** driving past telephone posts on a freeway... no need to drop $$ into producing that sound accurately

I think you might be driving too fast if the phone poles are going past 20x per second.

 

[what?]

I think you might be driving too fast if the phone poles are going past 20x per second.

Maybe it depends what street we are on, backwoods country or inner city ...

 

[gregorio]

Sorry, haven't visited this thread in a while and missed the questions:

[1] Are you and @gregorio talking about the same thing with doubling and, E.G., Björk's using higher frequencies to allow infrasonic tones to be heard? And does "doubling" in this instance refer to playing two notes an octave apart, or just playing two notes simultaneously?
[2] Gregorio, don't you mean that all fundamental tones fall between 31Hz and 4kHz (with the exception, I guess, of some organs, according to the chart above)?
[2a] Wouldn't the harmonics also be considered part of the music?

1. Yes, "doubling" in this instance refers to playing two notes simultaneously which are an octave apart.

2. Not really. I mean all fundamental tones fall between 31Hz and 4kHz, including some organs and extended pianos.
2a. Generally "no". Harmonics are certainly an integral part of the sound (of every instrument), but not really considered part of the music. By this I mean that composers, musicians and the music notation system itself traditionally only considers the fundamental tone/pitch. Different instruments or different sounds (say a "muted" instrument for example) are considered just in terms of it being a different sound (or in musical terminology a different "timbre"), notwithstanding the fact that this different instrument sound/timbre is caused by different harmonics (and/or a different balance of harmonics). Just to confuse matters a bit more, the term "harmonics" is common in music but refers to the natural harmonic series of a tube (or tubes in the case of a brass instrument) or string, each of which is a different "note" (with a different fundamental pitch and set of harmonics).

One exception to this is the rare condition mentioned, those extremely hign notes on some pipe organs, which "double" the fundamental pitch. Effectively, as far as music is concerned, it's the same note with a slightly different "timbre". BTW, these very high frequency pitches on an organ are not directly physically played, a valve (called a "stop") is opened so that air is allowed through the additional pipes. The organist still just plays the same keys on the organ keyboard but gets both the original note/s plus the additional "harmonic". In the case of very low notes, they are typically physically played (by the organist's feet using "pedals") but again you've effectively got the same note but with an added harmonic. As is also the case with the extended keyboard piano, these very low frequencies can't really be played as individual notes, human hearing is too insensitive to these frequencies, the audience too distant from the source (pipe or strings) and an acoustic instrument can't output enough energy to overcome these two factors. So effectively they're used as a different timbre rather than a different note.

G

 

[71 dB]

I've never figured out what the black bars represent. Perhaps Gregorio knows. Masking?

I think the black bars are there because those intruments have different variations with different ranges.

 

[71 dB]

The diatonic scale, of which there are seven modes.

Ionian (major) ---> happy
Dorian ---> sad but hopeful
Phrygian ---> dark
Lydian ---> happy but quirky
Mixolydian ---> happy but serious
Eeolian (minor) ---> sad
Locrian ---> dissonant

 

[71 dB]

The legend is in the lower right corner of @castleofargh 's link above:

Oh that's that!