Xylophone
The standard works on orchestration and musical notation which I've consulted say that the xylophone sounds an octave higher than written, either with or without an octavo clef. But in the attached sample score, it sounds to me like the xylophone sounds in playback as written, not an octave higher. Is this the way it is supposed to be? Am I just hearing it wrong?
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| xylophone.mscz | 4.62 KB |
Comments
The song "Over the Rainbow" from "The Wizard of OZ" begins with 2 successive notes, an octave apart.
Have a listen to this attachment:
Somewhere_over_the_xylophone.mscz
Regards.
Yes, you are hearing it wrong :-) The xylophone in your example does indeed sound an octave higher than the flute. The radically different overtone structures of the two instruments can make this determination tricky, I guess.
In reply to Yes, you are hearing it… by Marc Sabatella
Thanks for the reply. They certainly sounded the same to me, but I guess different people have different sensitivities to pitches. The fact that I was listening to it on cheap earphones may have obscured the difference too. Maybe I can find a smartphone app that shows the exact frequency of a given tone.
In reply to Thanks for the reply. They… by jcorelis
The problem is that each note actually contains many overtones, so just as your ear can get confused by those, so can software. Not sure what extra value you'd get out of it even if it worked, though - it would just tell you the same thing the notation tells you.