MUSICAL NOTES. 349 



)f vibrations, but owing to certain natural conditions of 

 :he human ear, only those notes are acceptable to the 

 iar, when used in conjunction with each other as, for 

 nstance, in the same piece of music whose frequencies 

 )f vibration bear certain definite ratios to each other, or 

 as the same fact is expressed in the language of 

 nusicians which form with each other certain definite 

 nusical ' intervals/ The whole series of sounds which 



ire available for the formation of musical combinations, 



i 



,vhen arranged in the order of increasing frequency of 



/ibration, constitute what is called the musical scale or 



jamut. The scale used in the simplest kind of music 



livides the octave into seven notes, each of which is 



iharacterised by the fact of its rate of vibration bearing 



! determinate ratio to that of the lowest note. The 



even notes of each octave are designated 'in this country 



>y the first seven letters of the alphabet modified, when 



leedful, by certain additional signs, and in France and 



taly by the syllables ut or do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si. 



?he relation between these names, the ordinary musical 



lotation and the rates of vibration of the notes is illus- 



rated below in the case of the octave c' c" (see 



.348): 



\aa OF NOTE. c ; . d' e f f g' a! ?/ c" d" e" etc. 



t Ttt'lnt 1 9 5 4 s 5 15 O 9v 9 Ox/ 5 Q f rt 



RATE OF f ana** J-si 3 2 a a JJx Jx etc. 



jBRATioN\^&rf. 264 297330 352 396 440 495 528 594660 etc. 



This series of notes, continued upwards and down- 

 lards in the same manner, constitutes the scale of c : if 

 iy other note than c' were taken as starting point, say 

 or ^7, a series of notes having the same relative rates of 







-. 



