This Hertz


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Posted by Steve Dedman on August 31, 2003 at 20:47:07:

The thread below about pedals got me to wondering: what is the frequency in Hz of a pedal CC, and on down? As I recall, an octave lower is exactly 1/2 the frequency of the octave above. So: A440 is in the treble staff, A220 is at the top of the bass clef, A110 is at the bottom of the bass clef, A55 is 3 lines below bass clef, and A27.5 is pedal A. An octave below that would be A13.75. That's 13.75 cycles per second. The next octave down would be 6.875 cycles per second. As a reference, your computer's cursor probably blinks once per second. At that frequency, you could actually single tongue each beat of the sound wave.

Dr. Young mentions the BBb below the pedal being playable as a first valve note. But is this actually recognizable as a pitch? It seems that the laws of physics and the limitations of the human ear would make this pitch sound like a series of taps, as opposed to hearing the the frequency of the sound wave as a pitch. And: can anyone actually control the embouchure at that slow frequency so that the "vibrations" are perfectly timed to produce the pitch? Has anyone ever heard a fundamental played on one of the BBBb behemouth tubas? Or are we talking about something that is essentially theoretical?

Hmmm.


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