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Musical Scales: Frequency Ratios That Are Simple

  • Next, the ratio of the second overtone to the first overtone. It’s 784.8 Hz : 523.2 Hz, a ratio of 3:2. (middle column, second and third numbers).
  • Keep doing this for the first few overtones, and you end up with a list of simple ratios of frequencies, like this (Table 9):

TABLE 9 Simple Ratios of Frequencies

  • 2:1
  • 3:2
  • 4:3
  • 5:4
  • 6:5
  • ... (and so on)

Next step: try out simple ratios of frequencies as an organizing principle to build a scale ...

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