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A semitone, also called a minor second, half step, or a half tone, [3] is the smallest musical interval commonly used in Western tonal music, [4] and it is considered the most dissonant [5] when sounded harmonically.
The cent is a logarithmic unit of measure used for musical intervals. Twelve-tone equal temperament divides the octave into 12 semitones of 100 cents each. Typically, cents are used to express small intervals, to check intonation, or to compare the sizes of comparable intervals in different tuning systems.
A semitone is any interval between two adjacent notes in a chromatic scale, a whole tone is an interval spanning two semitones (for example, a major second), and a tritone is an interval spanning three tones, or six semitones (for example, an augmented fourth).
This is a list of the fundamental frequencies in hertz (cycles per second) of the keys of a modern 88-key standard or 108-key extended piano in twelve-tone equal temperament, with the 49th key, the fifth A (called A 4), tuned to 440 Hz (referred to as A440). [1] [2] Every octave is made of twelve steps called semitones.
Meantone refers to meantone temperament, where the whole tone is the mean of the major third. In general, a meantone is constructed in the same way as Pythagorean tuning, as a stack of fifths: the tone is reached after two fifths, the major third after four, so that as all fifths are the same, the tone is the mean of the third.
For the ordinary diatonic scales described here, the T-s are tones and the s-s are semitones which are half, or approximately half the size of the tone.But in the more general regular diatonic tunings, the two steps can be of any relation within the range between T = 171.43 ¢ (for s = T at the high extreme) and T = 240 ¢ (for s = 0 at the low extreme) in musical cents (fifth, p5, between 685 ...
Equal temperament is the division of the octave in twelve equal semitones. The frequency ratio of the semitone then becomes the twelfth root of two (12 √ 2 ≈ 1.059463, 100 cents). The tone is the sum of two semitone. Its ratio is the sixth root of two (6 √ 2 ≈ 1.122462, 200 cents).
Since one semitone equals 100 cents, one octave equals 12 ⋅ 100 cents = 1200 cents. Cents correspond to a difference in this logarithmic scale, however in the regular linear scale of frequency, adding 1 cent corresponds to multiplying a frequency by 1200 √ 2 (≅ 1.000 578 ).