Pitch

Welcome to this music theory crash course for electronic musicians! These videos are going to teach you the essential concepts and language of music theory in the context of music production with a DAW like Ableton Live. This means that I won’t be getting you to look at sheet music, learn Rachmaninoff’s flight of the bumblebee, or any of that boring stuff that you don’t want to spend your time on. And actually, along with this course, I’ll be showing you tools that will help you harness the power of music theory without having to memorize chord names and scales. But first, it’s super important to know some key words and concepts. PITCH

First off, Pitch. Well, if you’ve ever watched the Magic School bus you’ll probably already be acquainted with this but essentially, The term pitch refers to the perceived frequency of a sound. In other words, the pitch is how high or low a sound seems to a listener. The higher the frequency of the sound wave, the higher the pitch of the sound. The lower the frequency, the lower the perceived pitch. So if we’re talking about the keys on a piano or piano roll, the keys on the top are at a higher pitch and the keys on the bottom are at a lower pitch. High note, Low note, High-Frequency, Low-Frequency.

Okay, so the next topic to understand is Sound WAVES. Sound waves are vibrations that travel through the air (or other mediums) and are detected by our ears. Very similar to waves or ripples on the surface of water, sound waves radiate outward from the sound source in all directions. The air molecules are literally being compressed tighter together, and then pulled away from one another. This is called compression and rarefaction. It’s these slight pressure changes that impact our eardrums and allow us to hear sound from a distance. If the rings of these waves are closer together, they are called higher frequency waves, on the flip side, if the rings are farther apart they are low-frequency waves. Sound waves are measured in cycles per second. For example, the very middle key on your piano, (called middle C) produces a sound wave that oscillates at a frequency of 256 cycles per second. You can also call this 256 Hz (Hertz). I know this is a little sciencey right now but bear with me. This is important info to know before you can fully grasp some of the next topics.