Musical Pitch, the Dummies Version

brass instrument relative sizes

From the annals of the Antisocial Network's music research section comes today's DotD story. Now we must admit that we don't delve into music very often, probably because the vast majority of musical freelancing is reviews, which are opinions instead of facts. But every once in a while we run across someone making a bogus claim about the science of music (frequencies, wavelengths, that sort of stuff), which is what we have today. Let's see what Aaron Charles (Lundstrom) told the readers of eHow.com when he attempted to answer that age-old question, "What Instruments Have the Highest Pitch?" (now moved to OurPastimes.com)

Charles, perhaps because he's a bicycle mechanic instead of a musician, knows little or nothing about the topic. That, however, didn't stop him from from telling us a-a-a-a-ll about the high-pitched instruments in the brass, woodwind and string families; and, for good measure (or perhaps because he had not yet met the minimum word count), vocals and guitars. In fact, for the most part Aaron gets the answers right: it's when he pads them out (that minimum word count bugaboo again...) that he gets himself into trouble.

See, for one thing, Aaron never explains why some instruments are capable of high pitches and some aren't. When he does try, he mucks it up... like this: "Of all the most common brass instruments used in an orchestra -- tuba, French horn, trumpet, trombone -- the trumpet has the highest pitch. According to the book 'Music Listening Today,' the trumpet achieves this high pitch via its three piston valves that change the length of the instrument's tubing. The cornet, closely related to the trumpet, has a different build, with tubing that's more cone-shaped on the inside instead of the cylinder-shaped tubing found in the trumpet."

Well, no, Aaron, those "three piston valves" aren't why the trumpet has a higher pitch than a trombone, the pitch difference is because the total distance from mouthpiece to bell in a trumpet is shorter than any other brass instrument. And while we're at it, Mr. Lundstrom, your explanation of the difference between trumpets and cornets is... clumsy. The diameter of a cornet's tubing increases slightly from beginning to end, while the diameter remains constant through most of a trumpet.

Charles, however, fails at every turn to explain why some instruments are high-pitched and some low -- even though he could have easily inserted it into a discussion of stringed instruments:

"The violin, the smallest instrument in the string family, plays the highest pitch notes among the string instruments. It has four strings and is similar to the viola, but is smaller in size."

Just think: a teachable moment passed up: you know, wavelengths and their relationship with frequencies? No? Neither does Aaron... who also prattles a bit about guitars and the human voice...

"...the average pitch peak for the human voice is 2,000 Hz... And on a 24-fret guitar you can reach approximately 1,175 Hz -- just below the human voice's average maximum..."

...which, a scientist studying musical frequency could explain, is utter bullshit: 1175 Hertz is the D an octave above middle C, while 2000 Hz is between the B and C of the next octave, hardly "just above" the D. Oh, and a mandolin maxes out higher than a guitar, anyway...

Nope, that's a bad answer submitted by someone who just looked up references and reworded them without understanding the principles involved. That's always a red flag for facts, and a near-direct path to the award we call the Dumbass of the Day.

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