Section Vocabulary  Pitch- the highness or lowness of sound  Hertz- unit used to measure the frequency of a sound wave  Octave- A series of 8 notes

Pitch  Many people find it hard to be good singers. The most difficult part of singing is hitting the highest and lowest pitches.  Pitch is the highness or lowness of sound  A sound wave’s frequency directly effects the pitch of a sound.

Pitch  Remember, frequency is the measurement of the amount of waves produced each second.  High pitched sounds produce many waves per second and so have a high frequency.  Low pitched sounds produce fewer sound waves per second and so have a lower frequency.

Pitch  The frequency of a sound wave is measured in a unit called hertz.  Some animals, including humans, have a certain range of frequencies that they can hear and a range that they can produce.

Pitch  Look at the chart below. People can hear sounds as low as 20Hz and as high as 20,000 Hz. How does that compare to other animals?

Pitch and Music  If you have ever played the piano, you know that the keyboard is divided into octaves. Each series of 8 notes makes up an octave.

Pitch and Music  Looking at the this piano, we see that there are more than one C. Middle C is shown as having a frequency of 264Hz. The C that is 8 steps above has a frequency of 528Hz, exactly double the amount!

Pitch and Music  What does this explain….. It could explain why when playing both C’s, they sound so similar.  The graph on the next page shows the frequency range for a number of musical instruments and for human voices.

Pitch and Music  As you can see Male voices can reach much lower pitches than Women and Women can reach much higher pitches than Males.

Musical Highs and Lows  If you have ever played the guitar, you know that thicker strings produce the lower notes and the thinner stings produce the higher notes.  The guitar player changes the length of the strings by holding the string down against the frets, the bars on the guitar neck.

Musical Highs and Lows  Also at the top of the guitar there are pegs that are used to change the tension on the strings. If the string is loosened by the peg, the pitch will sound lower.guitar  Wind instruments are a little different. Their pitch is controlled by the length of the vibrating column of air. The shorter the column of air, the greater the frequency of vibrations and the higher the pitch.

Controlling Loudness  The amplitude of the sound waves produced by musical instruments is heard as loudness.  Example: Sting Instruments- Stronger pluck= louder sound Wind Instruments- Hard the musician blows= louder sound Percussions Instruments- Harder strike of the object= louder sound