Introduction to Pitch for Guitar

Pitch is a fundamental aspect of music. One of the definitions of music is organised sounds over time. Thus it's important that we start with a solid explanation of what pitch is. When you hear a sound you are hearing three aspects - 1 Pitch (measured in Hz) 2 Loudness (measured in dB) 3 Timbre (the quality of the sound) for example the Electric guitar has a completely different sound than the bass drum or the piano.

Pitch is measured vibrations in the air detected by the ear.
- Measured by the frequency in Herz (Hz)
- Made by a plucked string, a hit of the drum, a note of the piano

Hertz is a system to measure frequency designed by scientist Heinrich Hertz. One Hertz = One vibration (cycle) per second. Hertz is the universal measure of pitch.

Have you ever seen a speaker when a song is being played that is low in pitch? The cone of the speaker "Flaps" this is because the sound is low in Hertz so you can 'see' the speaker cone vibrating, if the sound was higher in pitch the speaker vibration would be harder to spot.

It is a universal sight to see the speaker flapping about to symbolize low frequency music an example can be seen on this YouTube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwoRlO8aVsQ

The speaker is flapping because the Hertz is at a low setting so the speaker is only vibrating a small amount of times a second.

Your ear is designed to detect sound in the air, stemming from the very beginning of life your ear would be there to help you detect prey or a predator.

When a note vibrates faster we call it higher, when a note vibrates slower we call it lower. A2 on the piano is 110.000 Hz A3 on the piano (one octave higher) is 220.000 Hz which is exactly double the frequency in Hz. It's the same note but higher in pitch.

In early discovery of musical instruments as we know it today (with our equal tempered scale) if you half the length of the string you double its pitch and you go up by what we call an octave, this discovery has shaped the majority of western music as we know it today with the chromatic scale which has twelve pitches.

If you go to your guitar now and play any note on the guitar with an open string (no frets being used) then fret the 12th fret and play the same string what you will get is the same note but an octave higher).

Octave means 8 tones, if you were playing the open A string then the octave would be an A as well.

A B C D E F G A
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
OPEN STRING OCTAVE

NB we are missing out semi tones for ease of reference.

The human ear can hear any frequency between (approx) 20Hz to 20,000 Hz which is part of the reason why most in earphones have this frequency response. As an adult this range diminishes with age.

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