Saturday, April 7, 2018

The engineering octave as opposed to the ear brain octave


They do not coincide, why should they?


The first deals with frequency, the second deals with pitch.


Frequency is defined as vibrations (repetitions of a periodic phenomenon) per second.


Pitch is what we humans perceive as height of a note.


They are related but they do not match or coincide.


Foe example pitch depends not only on frequency but on intensity too. Try playing a 440Hz tone louder and you will immodestly hear it going flat. Online tone generators are great tools. (Pay extra attention to intensity in order to avoid damage to ears or speakers.


Great producers such as Phil Ramone always paid attention to the backing rack volume for their artists to be right (low enough?) so that they can sing in tune.


An other example is that exact doubling of frequency does not sound like a satisfactory octave. The ear brain needs a bit more in frequency.


So one brain for some reason needs stretched engineering octaves.


References:

Stretched octaves - Ernst Terhardt
http://euroelectron.blogspot.gr/2015/06/octave-stretch.html


Sound and Hearing - Stevens, Warshofsky - Time Life science series


Making Records - Phil Ramone






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