Talk:Octave

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[edit] Initial comments

I removed this:

The word is also used to describe the set of 8 notes which fall within the range of an octave in a scale.

because I don't know what it means, frankly. What it seems to boil down to is "Octave means octave". Even in the diatonic scale (and let's not forget, there are thousands of other scales), there are really only seven notes to the octave: the eighth is a repetion of the first, an octave higher.

Also, 8ve is short for octave, but 8va, while short for ottava, is used to mean "play it an octave higher than is written", rather than simply "octave". I guess that might be mentioned somewhere, but it isn't used as an equivalent to octave, so I took it out. --Camembert

A while back I actually made a stub 8va article. Perhaps it could be integrated with this one. -- Merphant

Ah, I didn't notice that - I think I'll move it in here, yes, and make 8va a redirect. It'll help to de-stubify this article, and I can't see 8va ever containing that much more than is there now, anyway. --Camembert


I think I know what that means, and I'm not sure it's important, but let's see if I can say it in a meaningful way. A piano has 88 keys which range in pitch from 27.5 (A0) to 4186 Hz (C8). The numeral indicates which octave the note falls into. "Middle C" is C4. It is in the octave (the set of 8 notes) that begins at A4. FWIW, the 'eight' is built into the terminology: a note 8 notes higher that another is an octave higher the same way the octave of a holiday is 8 days later. If you divide it into more notes, it's a bit of a misnomer to call it an octave anymore - (I don't know what else it would be called, though I imagine there's a name for it)<G> -- Someone else 01:51 Oct 28, 2002 (UTC)

Well, an octave is just called an octave no matter how many notes there are in between, though when talking about non-diatonic (or non-chromatic) scales in a technical context, people sometimes prefer to use frequency ratios rather than words, so they talk of a 2:1 rather than an octave. As for "that", I see what was meant now (thanks), but I'm afraid I still can't think of a way of rewording it and putting it back into the article without it sounding like it's saying "an octave is also a range of notes an octave wide". Probably just me being dim :) --Camembert

As well as being used to describe the relationship between two notes, the word is also used when speaking of a range of notes an octave wide.

Hmmm, no, I don't think this is good either. There is no place in the article about an octave being a set or a distance of eight, which makes the comment seem redundant; that was your original complaint. The original text mentioned that, sort of. The article should mention that usage, and then maybe say that the musical usage got its name from the 8 notes in the diatonic scale -- I assume that's where it came from anyway. Your last point is still valid, though, and needs to be mentioned; an octave maintains the same 2:1 ratio no matter how many notes you squeeze in between. I'll let you figure out how to write all this, because you're more articulate than me ;) -- Merphant


I've rewritten that bit: "the word is also used when speaking of a range of notes that fall between a pair an octave apart ... ". It seems inconsisnte to speak of 8 notes of a diatonic octave (count both Cs), but 12 of chromatic (count only the bottom C), but as I was about to write just that it seemed to make sense. Will report back on this intriguing sensation later ... :-) -- Tarquin 11:36 Oct 28, 2002 (UTC)

How about something like: "An octave is a range of eight notes, in a diatonic scale that is, but a diatonic scale only has seven notes, and really is has 12 notes (that's called the chromatic scale), but we don't use all of them, and that's why we don't call it the triskidective, which would be 13." ;) Really, I think that what Tarquin has added makes sense, but after all this, I'm not sure if I really know anything about music any more - when I started at the wikipedia, I didn't expect to be turned into a skeptic... --Camembert

"It is also the inversion of the unison" feels intuitively wrong to me - is this something that a particular writer states to be the case, or has it just been extrapolated by moving one note of a unison up an octave? I want to say rather that the inversion of an octave is still an octave, and the inversion of a unison a unison - as they all belong to the same pitch class, it seems a bit academic anyway. I mean, of course if you invert a diminished octave you get an augmented unison, but when talking about perfect unisons and octaves... it just seems wrong to me. --Camembert

I clarified the inversion (music) article a little. For the record, the octave is the inversion of the unison (& vice versa). Some confusion comes from compound intervals, if two notes are two octaves apart their inversion will make them either one octave apart or three, in which case it does appear the octave is the inverse of the octave...Hyacinth
If you invert two notes two octaves apart, you might end up with them one octave apart or they might be three octaves apart? I'm afraid you've completely lost me there. That would be true if the process of inversion was moving one of the notes up or down an octave, but it's not - if it were, then a compound major third, say, would still be a major third after inversion, which is ludicrous. Inversion is really about switching the positions of the notes, so that the one that was on top is now on the bottom and vice versa. And if both notes are Cs then switching them has no effect - you still have a C on top and a C on the bottom, just like you did before. That's what I mean when I say it's academic, really. Anyway, it's probably not a tremendously big deal, but more on this at Talk:Inversion (music). --Camembert
The process of inversion is "switching the positions of the notes", however, for a simple interval that means only moving ONE note ONE octave. A fifth becomes a fourth only if it was a simple interval to begin with, thus, when describing the complementary nature of inverted simple intervals, it makes sense to include the unison and the octave. I removed the mention from the unison and octave articles, I do believe, but left it at Inversion, I think.Hyacinth 04:08, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Something knocked loose in my head, and I figured out what I was trying to do: The octave is the complement of the unison! -Hyacinth 05:30, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] What about technical meaning of an 'octave' ?

something along the lines of "this term is used to denote factor of 2 difference not only for audio frequencies, but for radio frequencies as well"

Paul B.

A minor edit is needed to correct this sentence: "This is in some ways is similar..." Sir48-DK

Hmm... The "technical" meaing of an octave? I'm afraid that it, as is the case with so much of musical nomenclature, can only be considered to have a traditional or conventional meaning. By contrast, a "technical" meaning, to me, implies something more precise than eight "steps", which by the way, are themselves most commonly understood as being of at least two different sizes, and for which many alternative sizes have been proposed throughout the centuries. Of course, straightforward verbiage like "a factor of two" is not plagued by the same ambiguity as "octave", which itself cannot always be assumed to even mean exactly a factor of two. Consider, for example, the very conventional practice of "octave stretching" to compensate for the inharmonicity of strings or other psychoacoustic quirks. So, maybe, if in practice an octave is often not synonymous with "a factor of two", all we really can say is something not quite so strong: An octave is "factor-of-twoish". -sdn

[edit] Transpositional equivalency

I edited the phrase "and less so transpositional equivalency and, less still, inversional equivalency, the latter two of which are generally used only in musical set theory or atonal theory". Most people will recognise a known melody whether it is played in C major or D major (and few can tell the difference). So "transpositional equivalency" is not just a theoretical matter. Inversed themes are often used in baroque counterpoint. Apus 14:40, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] `The' 10 octaves

The Dutch wikipedia article nicely explains how there are names for 10 octaves (in the sense of intervals starting at C). I could translate it, but as a non-native speaker I'm not entirely sure about the correct English terms. Personally I think this is useful information to be included. If no-one disagrees and nobody else steps forward do make the addition, I'll take a stab at it. --Raboof 20:25, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Dutch may have names for these octaves, but English doesn't. The closest we have are numbers, like C3 and C4, but these aren't really widespread, or even standardized. —Wahoofive (talk) 22:40, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually, there are names, but they're not common and may not be consistently applied. I remember that they are given in the Harvard Dictionary of Music, though. The names are similar to the Dutch (They're something like subcontra, contra, great, small, one-line, two-line, etc.). I'll look it up and see what the dictionary's opinion on its standardness is. Even if it's somewhat obsolete or inconsistent, it probably should be included as people may run into the term in older works. Rigadoun (talk) 19:34, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I've checked and I was right about the names (except it doesn't give the names subcontra, or beyond four-line, which is reasonable since that gives the whole piano spectrum except the three lowest notes). It also gives three systems of notation for designating octaves; for the seven octaves given, this is how C is noted:

Three systems of octave notation
System No. Contra Great Small One-line Two-line Three-line Four-line
1 C1 C c c' c'' c''' c''''
2 CCC CC C c c' c'' c'''
3 C2 C1 C c c1 c2 c3
Source: "Pitch Names" in Harvard Dictionary of Music, Willi Apel, ed., 2nd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972. P. 679.

It uses (1) in the Dictionary itself, says the chief source of confusion is whether to notate middle C with a prime or not. It also says (3) is the most logical, but has not been widely accepted. It also gives a source: R.W. Young, in the Journal of Musicology i, no. 2, pp 5-8. I'm not sure what's there. Note that they do not include the system C1, C2, etc., which should be included as well as it is common.

However, all of this I think should go at Octave scale, which is a confusing article but I think this is what it's talking about. Either that or that article should be merged here (which I support, at their current lengths). There are also articles for First octave (i.e. Contra), and Seventh octave (i.e. Four-line). Probably either those two should be deleted or we should add one for each of the octaves. There is also Scientific pitch notation and the second chart at Note#Note name to consider. Rigadoun (talk) 18:44, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

There's a lot of ways to describe the octave of a pitch, as we've seen, and there's unfortunately no one system that is so widely used as to be considered a standard (maybe this is different in the Netherlands, but I suspect the Dutch article just doesn't cover other notations). It's worth mentioning various common standards like the ones stated above. As for what goes in what article, I'm not really a fan of the article title "octave scale". What does it mean? I think the material easily fits within this article (Octave), which is not terribly long. The first and seventh octave articles could easily be merged into Vocal range. Scientific pitch notation seems to have enough of its own information to stand. The table at note name is probably fine, and the table in note seems relevant to the section. My suggestion would be to merge octave scale into this article, and first and seventh octaves into vocal range. Everything else seems fine to me. - Rainwarrior 04:26, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually, while the shorthand symbols differ, the full names of the octaves appears to be quite consistent (e.g. http://www.dolmetsch.com/defso.htm). I do think this information belongs here rather than at octave scale. As for describing the octave of a pitch, I think referring to note-octave and/or Note#Note name might be sufficient, though I have no objections to including others. --Raboof 23:36, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Hi. I'm a computer programmer working with MIDI, and I'd like to pitch in (no pun intended ;-) with the octave number thing. I've worked with different keyboards and software, and they all use different bases for what the 'zero octave' is. But at least they all define an octave scale as beginning on a C and including the next 11 semitones upwards to B.
The only thing all sources agree on is that Middle C has a "pitch" value of 60.
If anyone's interested, I can put together a table of different sources and how they define the number of a given octave. Like, middle C is C1 in Guido music notation, C0 in LilyPond (?), C4 in Casio and C3 in Yamaha. (Don't rely on these octave number now, that was just off the top of my head. I'll dig into it if asked.) --Uncle Ed 14:36, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Equivalency

Re:

This is called octave equivalency, and is closely related to the concept of harmonics. This is similar to enharmonic equivalency, and less so transpositional equivalency and, less still, inversional equivalency, the latter of which is generally used only in counterpoint, musical set theory, or atonal theory.

The first sentence makes sense, but the other references are entirely off-topic. Inversional equivalency has nothing to do with octave other than including the same term in its title. —Wahoofive (talk) 19:54, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Diatonic and chromatic

The article uses the term diatonic without adequate explanation. This term, along with chromatic, is the cause of serious uncertainties at several Wikipedia articles, and in the broader literature. Specifically in this case, there is a reference to the diatonic scale whose meaning is uncertain; and there is, in the box at the end of the article, a confusing and anomalous reference to diatonic intervals. (See also some of the discussion above.) Some of us thought that such terms needed special coverage, so we started up a new article: Diatonic and chromatic. The problems I have mentioned just now are elaborated there. Why not have a look, and join the discussion? Be ready to have comfortable assumptions challenged! – Noetica♬♩ Talk 16:19, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Error in formula ?

In the section concerning the electric relevance, we can find "13 khz" in the text but 13GHz in the formula. Isn't this an error ?

sseb22 (talk) 08:25, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Octave (equal temperament)"

The sound file is labeled "Octave (equal temperament)". Is there some difference between an octave on an equally tempered scale and an octave on some other mode or scale contemplated here? If we were talking about a fifth rather than an octave, there would clearly be a difference, but here the ratio of frequencies actually is 2:1 rather than some compromise. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)