Pitch = Rhythm

So I was reading this rediculous book (I believe it was The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten), and it mentioned that rhythms are just extremely low pitches....Something like the vibrations from chopping A440 in half a bunch of times would eventually end up being X beats per minute.
Is there any merit to that or is it just fiction?

I thought it was a very good book, by the way. You might want to check it out....

~Kal

In theory, yes, this is true.

I've also come across some pretty fantastical stuff regarding this topic, like a Swiss (or Dutch) mathematician who wrote a book connecting everything from colours and planets to the octave.

As far as creative foder is concerned, this kind of stuff goes a long way for me. How real or legitimate is it? Couldn't tell you. All I do know is that sound and light are different, and there's no real way to say that the note c# corresponds with our planets orbit around the sun.

Rhythms, though, may be different, as that's what notes are as well. I see it being perfectly plausable. But who knows (not me).

So I was reading this [ridiculous] book

I thought it was a very good book, by the way. You might want to check it out...

I'm confused

Anyways, are Rhythm pitches? Probably not, but Rhythm are produced by pitches being held for various length of time.

Originally Posted by DOFTS

I'm confused

It's rediculously good.

~Kal

I mean, A440 vibrates 440 times a minute, which is quarter notes at Q = 440 or sixteenths at Q = 110. So yeah, pitches are rhythms. But it also means nothing.

So if pitches are rhythms, are rhythms pitches? If so, then when I play sixteenth notes on a table, I'm a playing an extremely low pitch? But what about the pitch of me actually hitting the table? Am I playing two notes at the same time? But if me hitting the table has a pitch, isn't that pitch a rhythm too?



~Kal

It's mearly that we percieve vibrations of sufficient speed as pitch. Snakes can "hear" other animals' movements - the extremely low frequency vibrations in the are that are created by a mouse moving are "heard" in a similar way to the way we hear normal sound.

Rhythms of constant or repetitious variety can be compared to pitch relationships. A 2 over 3 polyrhythm is much like a perfect fifth; a 4 over 3 polyrhythm is much like a perfect fourth. (These are Pythagorean ratios.) But as far as the greater complexities of decoration and variation against a pulse (and in modern music, even that pulse isn't constant), these types of comparisons go out the window. Such a non-constant rhythmic surrounding it is as good as noise when translated into the language of pitch.

I'd say its a pretty sweeping statement. Rhythm, and more specifically, pulse, is generally seen as being useful to humans for three reasons - the pulse of the human heart, the varied expressiveness of the fluctuating human voice through language, and the way our brains sort out the world into a stable, linear temporal stream. Pitch, is completely distinct from this, and can't really be compared to rhythm very much. And as far as compositional sensibilities go, they remain to be separate entities.

Originally Posted by spherenine

I mean, A440 vibrates 440 times a minute, which is quarter notes at Q = 440 or sixteenths at Q = 110. So yeah, pitches are rhythms. But it also means nothing.

A440 is 440 vibrations per SECOND. Which is quarter notes at Q = 26,400, or sixteenths at Q = 6,600.

Henry Cowell wrote some very interesting stuff about pitch/rhythm equivalencies, and even developed a temporal music notation to work with it.

Originally Posted by Keerakh Kal

So if pitches are rhythms, are rhythms pitches? If so, then when I play sixteenth notes on a table, I'm a playing an extremely low pitch? But what about the pitch of me actually hitting the table? Am I playing two notes at the same time? But if me hitting the table has a pitch, isn't that pitch a rhythm too?



~Kal

Rhythms are pitches. People find 4/4 drumbeats pleasing because it's creating the (very low) intervals of octave and fifth, if it's just quarter notes, and then if you add eighths, that's another fourth on top of it, making two full octaves. It's called "metric consonance," by some people. And then of course, rhythms like 7 against 13 make "metric dissonance."

The actual range of human hearing (approx. 20 Hz) varies by the type of wave. You hitting a table is a square wave, and could feasibly be heard as a pitch at 15 hits/second, and for some people, even as low as 10. The lowest A that can POSSIBLY be heard as pitch is 13.75 Hz (13.75 cycles/second), but the pitch "A," based on 440, goes down to 3.185 Hz, and even lower. So you could approximate the "A" pitch with a tempo of approximately Q = 96.

Originally Posted by Christopher Dunn-Rankin

A440 is 440 vibrations per SECOND. Which is quarter notes at Q = 26,400, or sixteenths at Q = 6,600.

Henry Cowell wrote some very interesting stuff about pitch/rhythm equivalencies, and even developed a temporal music notation to work with it.

Oh God, dude. I know.

Shit. That's awful. And it's not even like it was a typo. That was just pitiful.