[music-dsp] Ratio Between Consecutive Semitones

[Sampo Syreeni]

On 2002-12-18, David Olofson uttered to music-dsp at aulos.calarts.edu:

>There's some kind of pitch hysteria in this. Songs are transposed to the
>highest pitch the singer can cope with, for clarity and "the right
>sound".

Yes. It's about pretty much the kind of competition which once gave us
today's pitch standards, with A=440Hz. From Wikipedia:

"Throughout the first half of the 19th century, there was a tendency for
the pitch used by orchestras to rise. This was probably largely due to
orchestras competing with each other, each attempting to fill increasingly
large concert halls with a brighter, more "brilliant", sound than that of
their rivals. They were helped in this endeavour by the improved
durability of the violins' E-strings - in the 16th century, Michael
Praetorius had rejected various high pitch standards as leading to snapped
strings, but the new strings could take the higher tension without
breaking."
-- 
Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:decoy at iki.fi, tel:+358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
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