OCTAVE IN MUSIC FULL

Having octave buttons eliminates the need for a huge space-hogging keyboard with all 88 keys, yet we can still reach all of the keys when we need them. Many keyboards will let you transpose the keyboard several octaves in either direction, which would allow you, for instance, to play ultrasonic music that only small rodents can hear, to your heart’s content.

The opposite would occur if you hit the ‘Octave Up’ button. So for example, if you press the ‘Octave Down’ button on our 49-key synth from the previous example, the keyboard range will now be from Octave 1 through Octave 5 it’s as if the whole thing slid down an octave toward the left side of the piano. For this purpose, there are usually ‘octave’ buttons on the keyboard that allow us to transpose the entire keyboard up or down by an octave. And C4, middle C, is still pretty close to being smack in the middle of the keyboard, as in the picture below:īut what if we do want to play those really low or really high notes? Have no fear we still can. So that leaves us with four octave registers, Octaves 2, 3, 4, and 5, the most used registers on the piano. Octaves 1, 6, and 7 are completely missing. So for example, on a typical 49 key synthesizer, the lowest key would usually be C2, the highest is C6. Since the lowest and highest octave registers are generally used a little less frequently than the middle ones, those are the ones they leave off of the smaller keyboards. Almost always, you can assume middle C will still be the closest to the middle of whatever keyboard you’re using.

Well, the first step is to find middle C.

OCTAVE IN MUSIC FULL

How do we identify the different registers on these smaller keyboards? Also, we’re obviously not getting the full range of notes, so exactly which octave registers are they giving us, and which ones are they leaving out? Okay, so that’s all wonderful if we have an 88 key grand piano sitting at home, but what if we have a keyboard that has fewer than 88 keys, such as 76, 61, 49, or even 25 (some of the standard keyboard sizes)?

Octave in music