Pitch & Notes

Pitch describes how high or low a note is; learn how this influences notes and your Theory journey!

View the full lesson at Pitch & Notes | JustinGuitar

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These revamped lessons are worth revisiting. I like the bullet points. The piano visuals make a great addition too (my first encounter with theory was in a keyboard context and I still use those visualsā€¦ glad to know others also find it useful).

Anyway, thank you for the extra enhancements to the course! :blush:

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What does it happen to the pitch note when I pump up the volume? Does the sinus wave change? Does the frequency change?

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Volume shouldnt change pitch at all.

In the real world an amp/speaker may at least change how you hear it though

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The frequency does not change. The amplitude changes.

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A string vibrating does not create a clean sine wave. This due to a few things; where the pickup is along the string, vibrations reflecting against the bridge and nut, where the string was plucked are some of the biggest.
If you feel like you are hearing the tone change, then your ampā€™s EQ stack is likely changing with the volume. This is a design tradeoff that is part of the ampā€™s engineering. What that means is the harmonics are getting filtered differently at one volume level than another. None of these pitches are changing, just some are not getting the same volume adjustment as others.

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ā€œThe frequency range of a guitar is roughly 80 Hz to 7 kHz.ā€ This seems too optimistic. If the you have 440 Hz at the fifth fret on the 1st string you get one plus additional octaves range going up the fretboard. Even at two additional octaves you only get a frequency response of around 3.5 kHz. The book list the frequency range for the guitar at 80 Hz to 1.31 kHz - seems a little low but practically correct.

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ONLY if you are talking about the fundamental frequency, but since no guitar string resonates at just the fundamental, then it is too narrow focused. This knowledge is where the range Justin is using must be coming from.

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@sequences your reading way to much into this. Everything you are saying applies to the piano, real piano have strings as well.
It doesnā€™t matter how you spin it a piano has a wide range of frequencies. And that is what the question is on the test. Which has a high frequency a piano or guitar? The answer on the answer sheet is the Piano.

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Hi stitch - not sure I follow you on this. My goal is more to make sure the stuff I am seeing here is not mis-understood. I think it could go that way too easily.

I think that the problem here is some folks are talking highest note you can play, and some are talking highest hearable frequency. I would prefer that Justin had addressed the difference there.

I didnā€™t get that question on my test. Curious. I wonder if he has more questions in the queue than you see in one testing.

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@sequences the question is on the revised grade 1 PMT. It is the first module of grade one. Go watch the video and down load the workbook and you will find out what started this conversation. Justin say and write on the web site a guitar goes from 80Hz to 7kHz and a piano goes from 27Hz to around 4.18kHz. On the test about which one is high the answer is piano.
A guitar highest frequency is 1318Hz on a 24 fret guitar. The answer on the test is right. You have to remember this is grade 1 lesson 1 of a beginner course. Justin is talking natural notes on a guitar nothing more.

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thanks - I found it. that is a rubbish question and answer, especially given how the material was presented. Now I get the confusion.

I think Iā€™d answer ā€˜d - depends on the modelā€™ and have a valid argument to say I was correct. :slight_smile:

Iā€™ll go back a bit on my initial comment - the practical playable note is probably around 1.5k on the guitar. I tried to play pinch harmonics and natural harmonics on two guitars and it just is too high to be useful much beyond 1.5-2kHz. I managed to get a E8 (5274 Hz), but it was impractical musically. Or maybe my hearing is worse than I know, but then it is still too high to be useful!

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Thatā€™s right, if you are referring to the highest playable note. The only way the frequency range of a guitar extends to around 7KHz is if you consider harmonics. To avoid confusion, I think Justin should have ignored harmonics and just concentrated on the highest playable notes on each instrument.

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This is great ā€¦ I was put off music theory as a child . Our father was a brilliant pianist but terrible at teaching and very impatient. I play a bunch of songs and what I play sounds pretty good but with no real understanding of what Iā€™m doing so this is a great start to overcoming the ā€œfearā€ and that theory is boring and too complex ā€¦ thank you

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