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Every Culture Uses Octaves

Greetings from The Music Bowl! I'm the Wonderfish.

Did you know that no matter what culture you are born into, you will learn to use octaves? Every culture uses octaves! Worldwide! The pitches that we use to speak in have musical characteristics. What I'm trying to say is that you learn how to use octaves without even knowing it, because we learn them as we learn to speak. Typically, men speak in voices that are one octave below women's. Children's voices are usually one octave above women's.

Here is a small sampling of what cultures have in common, musically speaking:

  • pitch as communication
    • typically, you get a sense of a situation based on the pitch a person uses to communicate with; a higher pitched voice can signal trouble or distress while a lower pitched voice with a monotonous tone can signal calm and relaxation
  • singing to infants
    • we see adults singing and/or cooing to infants in nearly every culture; this helps babies learn how to communicate; do you remember the last time you talked to a baby? I bet you cooed!
  • music for moods
    • around the globe, we see humans using music to match the mood they are in; we like energetic, happy music to help us perform physical tasks just as we like relaxing music when we want to wind down
  • dynamics and volume for emphasis
    • every culture uses dynamics to help communicate ideas; how loudly someone speaks to you means something - think about what is going on when someone yells at you versus when someone whispers to you
We will discuss these commonalities more in depth as our series continues. However, since we mentioned pitch today, I'd like to leave off this week with some remarks on vocal ranges. Take a moment and try to sing the lowest note that you possibly can, and then slide up to the highest pitch you can reach. That should give you a basic idea of what your vocal range is. Your range spans a couple of octaves, I'd say. A few of the lucky ones have ranges of 5 octaves and then some, which is quite rare. This group would include singers such as Mariah Carey, Minnie Riperton, Axl Rose, and Corey Taylor. More about them next week! Shark's in the water! See ya!


Today's Sources:
In my college days, I took a few music courses and a few history and anthropology courses (I studied at Ithaca College and Cortland State). Many of these points are simply leftovers from lectures that I found interesting. I was inspired to start discussing octaves first by Daniel Levitin's 2006 book, This Is Your Brain On Music. It's fantastic and will be written about again in our series.
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