I just passed the 10,000 photo mark on the stop motion animations, good thing I’m not hand-drawing them like Winsor McCay! The one I’m working on, Real Girl, has a lot of dissonant notes in it. The melody ranges far from the roots and makes some slightly dizzying harmonic jumps. I want to use it…
Doubling the frequency of a note certainly changes it. The ear hears a higher-pitched note. But there is something in the essence of the note that does not change, a character that stays consistent through the octaves. This allows a process called octave reduction. When you’re working with notes as ratios, it’s convenient to multiply or…
Notes are pitched sounds. A given note means little by itself. It could be the tonic of a key, or some member of a scale based on a different tonic. By itself, it generates no tension, resolution or sense of place on the harmonic map. So when I name a note in this blog, I’ll…