![c5 midi note number c5 midi note number](http://www.muzines.co.uk/images_mag/articles/sos/SOS_86_05_talking_midi_2_large.jpg)
While 20Khz (more like 15-17 realistic for most people) is the audiable limit pretty much everything above 5Khz can have no timbre to speak of and decays into a disgustingly annoying sine. at least the low octaves generate a ton of audiable harmonics which are definitely useful in synthesis, which midi primarily concerns itself with.
![c5 midi note number c5 midi note number](https://i.pinimg.com/236x/d5/20/e2/d520e26eddef5d14a897601e0e96a98a.jpg)
and well, at least -1 somewhat implies the inaudability of the fundamental here.Īnd to be fair, the high octaves are just as useless (if not more so) than the low octaves. The Virginia Tech link given on the cockos (Reaper) forum implies that it was arbitrary, but they also make some mistakes with the C4 bit, so I'm not sure how well researched that is.ĭepending on which kit you ask, middle C is either C4 or C5. Maybe though it came prior to MIDI in voltage controlled synths where you've got 60 cycles or 120 volts or whatever coming out of the wall - it may have to do with the midpoint of something like that as well?
![c5 midi note number c5 midi note number](http://www.sengpielaudio.com/NotesAndKeyboardA.gif)
The lower end may provide ways to access LFO type waves or something.īesides, those really high sounds are annoying - it's more fun to play with a really low sound where the vibrations are breaking apart :-) I suppose, you could "shift up" the frequency range an octave as your chart basically does, as we can't hear that lowest octave anyway, and we'd be out of our range on the top end an octave up.īut the range is probably because, if you have a saw wave at 10k, you're not going to really be able to hear the 1st overtone - so anything beyond 10k is going to sound like a Sine wave pretty much. E makes sense as the 64 (or 63 rough midpoint for 0-127) as it's midway between A (a 5th below) and C (a 6th above) as the lowest and highest notes on the piano. MIDI notes range from 0-127, from below our range of hearing (at 8 Hz!) to G9 at about 12.5 kHz:ġ28 units puts 64 in the middle - "middle" C is about in the center of all that at 60.