Katana VentraIP

Pitch class

In music, a pitch class (p.c. or pc) is a set of all pitches that are a whole number of octaves apart; for example, the pitch class C consists of the Cs in all octaves. "The pitch class C stands for all possible Cs, in whatever octave position."[1] Important to musical set theory, a pitch class is "all pitches related to each other by octave, enharmonic equivalence, or both."[2] Thus, using scientific pitch notation, the pitch class "C" is the set

Although there is no formal upper or lower limit to this sequence, only a few of these pitches are audible to humans. Pitch class is important because human pitch-perception is periodic: pitches belonging to the same pitch class are perceived as having a similar quality or color, a property called "octave equivalence".


Psychologists refer to the quality of a pitch as its "chroma".[3] A chroma is an attribute of pitches (as opposed to tone height), just like hue is an attribute of color. A pitch class is a set of all pitches that share the same chroma, just like "the set of all white things" is the collection of all white objects.[4]


In standard Western equal temperament, distinct spellings can refer to the same sounding object: B3, C4, and Ddouble flat4 all refer to the same pitch, hence share the same chroma, and therefore belong to the same pitch class. This phenomenon is called enharmonic equivalence.

Flat (music)

Sharp (music)

Pitch circularity

Pitch interval

(List)

Tone row

Purwins, Hendrik (2005). "". Ph.D. Thesis. Berlin: Technische Universität Berlin.

Profiles of Pitch Classes: Circularity of Relative Pitch and Key—Experiments, Models, Computational Music Analysis, and Perspectives

Rahn, John (1980). Basic Atonal Theory. New York: Longman; London and Toronto: Prentice Hall International.  0-02-873160-3. Reprinted 1987, New York: Schirmer Books; London: Collier Macmillan.

ISBN

Schuijer, Michiel (2008). Analyzing Atonal Music: Pitch-Class Set Theory and Its Contexts. Eastman Studies in Music 60. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.  978-1-58046-270-9.

ISBN

Tsao, Ming (2010). Abstract Musical Intervals: Group Theory for Composition and Analysis. Berkeley, CA: Musurgia Universalis Press. ISBN 978-1430308355.

Butterfield, Sean (2023). . Chapter 23.

Integrated Musicianship: Theory