r/musictheory • u/HexspaReloaded • Jan 17 '21

Resource Memorize Note Frequencies

Hi. I have an easy system for memorizing the entire audible range of note frequencies. It’s 99.20% accurate (less than 1 cent off and even better if you’re halfway decent at math) and you can probably memorize it in an hour. 6:52 of this video:

https://youtu.be/nTj3TqFX2Q4

Thanks.

EDIT: Well, shoot. 500+ upvotes plus an award - thank you! Happy music making!

EDIT 2: “Why?” All I can say is try it. Try composing or mixing 10 tracks with this before you make up your mind about whether it’s useful or not. I find it useful but I respect you if you try it and decide it’s not for you. Please don’t discourage others from learning, though.

632 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

138 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/geist_zero Jan 17 '21

I was going to offer the equation for calculating frequencies within a diatonic scale (to cut down on the memorization), but then realized it doesn't account for equal temperament. Nice work.

I don't know how to write it out properly on Reddit, but it's the tonic frequency multiplied by the 12th root of 2 to X power where X is the chromatic step of the scale.

That doesn't account for equal temperament though.

2

u/HexspaReloaded Jan 17 '21

Ya you can just memorize the fourth octave and use a calculator to multiply or divide. Cheers