You Are Reading the First 6 FREE Chapters (470 pages)
Scale Notes: The Octave In Music and Perceived Spacing Between Notes
That last note of the scale sounds exactly like the first note, and yet ... well ... “higher” in pitch. The same, but somehow different. The terminology, familiar to everybody who plays music, goes like this: the last note of the scale is an “octave higher” than the first note.
As you can see in Figure 11 above, the eight notes of the do-re-mi scale are not evenly spaced. Still, when you play this scale, it sounds agreeable whether you play it from bottom to top or top to bottom. It sounds as though the notes are proceeding smoothly up and down the pitch “staircase.” As though all the notes are the same distance apart. Even though they obviously are not.
How come? What if all the pitches were actually the same distance apart?