1 | [[HurricaneOfPuns Some nasty black stuff that takes hundreds of years to flow through a funnel, but can be shattered in a moment's notice if used as a baseball.]] |
2 | |
3 | No, you were here for the music-related definition. Unless you weren't, and are actually looking for a single line summing up a show idea to present to the producers--see HighConcept for that. |
4 | |
5 | Pitch is how high or low a sound is. Sound travels in waves, and the waves have a characteristic frequency, that is, how many times a second the same wave pattern passes through a single point in space. That's measured in hertz (Hz), or cycles per second. The higher the frequency, the higher the sound. |
6 | |
7 | In modern tuning systems, it's standard to designate the sound of a simple sine wave at 440 Hz to be the A above middle C, for music-related purposes. Going down an octave approximately divides the frequency by two; going up an octave approximately multiples it by two. |
8 | |
9 | If you have a wave pattern that travels through air (or another medium), and has a given number of wave patterns per second, then you get your pitch. But why do different instruments playing the same pitch sound so different? |
10 | |
11 | Because the wave patterns themselves are different. Only the frequency determines the "fundamental" pitch. Instruments, when they sound a note of a certain pitch, actually sound many pitches that, added together at different volumes, give their distinctive waveform. |
12 | |
13 | The simplest, purest pitched sound is the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_wave sine wave.]] But note that, if you have a pattern that's half the length of your original wave, or a third, or a fourth, and so on, it also fits into the same wave period. These are called '''harmonics''', and the original sine wave is called the '''fundamental frequency'''. Harmonics have half, a third, a fourth, etc. the wavelength of a the fundamental frequency, and their frequencies are correspondingly twice, thrice, etc. as high. |
14 | |
15 | These different waves, all with the same fundamental period length, can be added together using a concept known as the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_series Fourier series]]--basically overlain one on top of another, if you're drawing them--to create a distinctive waveform. |
16 | ---- |
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/context.php
FollowingContext Main / Pitch
Go To
- Show Spoilers
- Night Vision
- Sticky Header
- Wide Load