General Music Chat

Why Middle"C" on a piano?

Simply, because Macs start up with a C chord.




hm, um...maybe not..

It's known electric motors run in the key of C. Try it. Flip your vacuum on and hit a C chord, perfect harmony.

Thats the inherent note i was referring to, everything in nature seems to have a resonance at or near a frequency of C.
I like to think it explains why C is the middle note on a Piano...i don't truely know if this the reason though?
If anyone does know the reason for middle C please chime in.
Aside from the fact that it's Do in the solfege Do, Re, Mi...
Could it be our human voice defaults to C?

I figured but I wasn't going to say.

Think about this, it is the only key (other then it's relative minor Am) that contains no accidentals.

Now that's freaky.

Wegman wrote on simplicity -

....The piece can be extremely simple, however it is excellent in it's simplicity. Let's look at the probably the simplest, and yet most well known and catchy riffs of all time, Smoke on the Water. Why does just about everybody know that tune"? It's brilliant in it's simplicity. I hope that kind of make the point.

Bingo! They say that brevity is the soul of genius, but I've heard a corrolary on that regarding simplicity.

celticpiping wrote on a Mac's "C" chord on launching

Why Middle"C" on a piano? Simply, because Macs start up with a C chord.

I guess it depends on which Mac system you're talking about. I haven't used one since back in the pre-OSX days, but my old G3 opened with a large F# major chord.

I can't wait to see who is first to include the dissonant, frightening first chord of the original score to "The Omen" in their start up sequence. I will surely buy their system!

everything in nature seems to have a resonance at or near a frequency of C.
I like to think it explains why C is the middle note on a Piano...i don't truely know if this the reason though?

I highly doubt that most of nature resonates at the pitch of C, but it is a cool thought.

Designations of "pitch" are pretty much made up by humans, just as organizing the weeks into "Sunday through Saturday". There are varied calendars throughout history that date things differently, and there are varied cultures that use different scales and different systems of "pitch".

A440 and not "C" is the modern accepted pitch, allowing orchestras and bands to play together, and that is fundamentally what it is all about.

Having a common pitch to tune to, has probably almost always existed, as long as instruments have, to allow people to play their instruments together in "tune". But this common "pitch" has changed over the centuries, until the commonly accepted A440 in western music. Prior to this, there was no accepted pitch that was standardized. Pitch could vary from city to city even. But in the same way that the length of a "foot" was set by the measure of the King's own foot, to create a standard size and avoid cheats, so too does civilization usually try and set commonly accepted measures for anything that can be measured.

It was important for musicians to be able to play "in tune" with one another, because a human ear can detect variations in pitch to certain degrees. I'm not sure what the degree is, but it is probably within hundredths at the most. Variations of pitch can be measured electronically to be different, but can be small enough to be imperceptible to human ears.

In any event, to standardize music and avoid problems, some group somewhere, decided that "A" would equal 440 Hz. It was adopted and fell into common practice and has remained so ever since.

That bit about the motor beiing a perfect 'C' is not quite right, either. Almost . . .
He's referring to something akin to 60 cycle hum.
The timing of many motors is determined by the wall current swapping neg. and pos. 60 times per second. . . . cheaper to use the existing timing, than to create a new one . . .
If middle C is 440, then the math works out to 55Hz . . . which is actually pretty close, but not perfect . . . In Europe, they use 50 Hz, also pretty close.
Incidentally, most 60 cycle hum is caused by transformers. The cheaper the Xfmr, the louder the hum. If Xfmrs were made of sold blocks of metal, there's losses due to magnetic eddy currents (hysteresis). So Xfmrs are made of slabs of metal glued together, yeilding about the same results. The glue eventually breaks down, and the slabs move an infinitesimal amount. But this amount is just enough to broadcast - you guessed it - 60 cycle him.

If middle C is 440...

No...."A" above Middle C is 440

But the rest was interesting. How do you know all that?

I read some where (credible) that electric motors run in the key of C. I never said middle C.

Arranging the pure harmonic ratios of a musical scale into a cube organizes the data necessary for choosing the correct harmonic tuning. Each cell in the cube is the multiple of the ratios for the Key, the Root and the Interval. That value times base pitch A440, the Key of C (a minor third of A - 6/5) would be 440 x 6/5 = 528. In the Key of C, the Root G (a fifth of C - 3/2) is 440 x 6/5 x 3/2 = 792. The tuning of the octave is based on the frequency of the Root note. In the Key of C, Root of G, the frequency of G# would be 440 x 6/5 x 3/2 x 16/15 = 844.80. The contents of that cell would be 6/5 x 3/2 x 16/15 = 1.92. That times 440 = 844.80.

If motors run at 550 using our formula from above of C being 528 that is pretty darn close.

I am only regurgitating what I have read.

One of the strangest sonic phenomenae I've ever seen (ironically) was when I was changing some strings on my harp, and the TV was playing the background. On a whim I plucked a string and watched it with the TV behind it. It moved in a fantastic oscillating motion thats not usually perceptible to the eye (my theory is that the flicker rate of the TV made this possible). All the strings moved in a similar oscillation except for the B string. It moved in a distinctly different pattern, more like a very slow sidewinder snake. Something is "up" with the key of B. Even emotionally, it is especially powerful when used in the minor.

You hoo guys....i never said what frequency of C that most sounds of inanimate objects are at or near.
In my original post i mentioned to just tap, or knock on things to find where their range sits on the musical scale. Most things, NOT everything will be round the note of C in any frequency.
Wegmans mentioning of a vacuum being in C is purely coincidental as it's manmade.
If we really want to over complicate things we can arrange a meeting where the Taos Hum can be heard just to keep things interesting.

I was using 1/2 wave, and 1/4 wave analysis for my contribution; electronics, not music.
I agree with the subsequent contributions.
.
Irminsul, you said " . . . . flicker rate of the TV made this possible . . ."
Right on.
Years ago I built a variable rate stobe light, and I used it on everything I could think of . . . well, almost . . .
I'll have to check out my guitar and bass under the stobe . . .

You hoo guys....i never said what frequency of C that most sounds of inanimate objects are at or near.
In my original post i mentioned to just tap, or knock on things to find where their range sits on the musical scale. Most things, NOT everything will be round the note of C in any frequency.
Wegmans mentioning of a vacuum being in C is purely coincidental as it's manmade.
If we really want to over complicate things we can arrange a meeting where the Taos Hum can be heard just to keep things interesting.

What key does the wind blow in? I know I hear the wind blowing through the trees up here in God's country, it has to be in some key.

I will check next time.

Nice piece, as always.

My own take on music is that it's made up of two parts - to borrow from old Latin terms and esoteric philosophies, "music" is made up of "animus" - organized sound that can be written down, reproduced and recorded - and "anima" the musicality, the spirit, that scientifically unmeasurable quality that makes us feel, or be transformed in some way or some degree.

I believe that the "anima" of music will forever remain elusive and evade cold analysis. Let me give you an example. In terms of music theory (animus - scientific, leftbrained stuff) I can take a single line from arguably one of the greatest pieces produced by Western Europe - Beethoven's 9th symphony - (Chorale) and lay it out on a data table both in tone and rhythm. The rhythm is almost childishly simple, four bars of four quarter-notes, ending with an eigth note and holding on a half note. The tones are:

F# F# G A A G F# E D D E F# F# E E

Wow, big deal right? I mean this is almost comically facile. I could take that rhythm and that cadence, and come up with a dozen variations that still hold to the form.

YET.....

Why is it that this ridiculously simple passage can cause the souls of so many to soar? Why is it so moving, so powerful? To take my experiment further, lets use Herr Beethovens same rhythym and use one of my note variations instead -

A A F# A B B F# B D C# B A F# E A

Hmmm...tonically it works. Harmonically it works. Yet why is it oddly...inferior?

What you are dealing with here is the mystery of musicality in music - the anima. The undefinable draw, the beauty, the power. To bring it to the realm of the visual, science can explain all day long what happens in the atmosphere during a sunset, but science is left mute when asked to explain why a sunset is beautiful.

* * *

I really love that last part. I mean why look for all the answers when the best things in life do not require "the answers". Why should we care what makes a sunset beautiful when we can just enjoy the fact that it is beautiful. Science tells us to question everything, but some things just are. Music is something that runs through the soul, it explains itself to those who are willing to listen.

Uh-oh and then the dam blew and all that water came a rushing down upon the frightened villagers. LOL