FREQUENCY SPECIFICATON

A note playing in a particular octave resolves to a particular frequency. This can be expressed in a number of ways in PolyHarp.

In its most basic form, you see a frequency expressed in Hertz - cycles per second.

You can also see it as the name of a note with various extensions:

• Frequency in floating point Hertz.
• Standard name alone: sharp is # and flat is b, and it's case insensitive. Enharmonics are supported to an extent. It will put this in octave "3". Example: ab , f#, g, cb. It's going to use 12EDO as the intonation system.
• Standard name with octave: c#1, eb5. Negatives are allowed, bb-1.
• Standard name with a cents offset correction, which follows a ¢ sign and is a signed floating point number. For example, Bb3¢+25 is an eighth tone higher than Bb3.

Frequencies are used in PolyHarp to specify the Base Key, the ranges of a String Area, and

For example, if your Base Key (frequency really) is an F, a "IM" Chord becomes an "FM", a "V7" chord is "C7", VIm9 becomes Dm9, and so forth.
But there are vast numbers of new kinds of chords to be made, like ones built from other Equal Temperaments, or Just ratios, equal divisions of other intervals, or merely specified in cents. It uses the special interval specification language, or the good old tonality spiral, which is also used in my app Droneo.

In the String Area parameters section, though, you can specify the frequency of the String Area Bounds with a special control window:

You can just tap a note name and octave, and fine tune it with the slider. Its easy to use, even if it's not able to be as accurate, but in this case, it needn't be. Read more