What does octave mean

Anagrams for octave » avocet. How to pronounce octave? Alex US English. David US English. Mark US English. Daniel British. Libby British. Mia British. Karen Australian. Hayley Australian. Natasha Australian. Veena Indian. Priya Indian. Neerja Indian. Zira US English. Oliver British. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Definition of octave. Examples of octave in a Sentence He sang the song an octave lower. Recent Examples on the Web Unison and octave lines sounded pitch perfect, and the ensemble work throughout was ideal. Mack, The Indianapolis Star , 30 June These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'octave. First Known Use of octave 14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1.

History and Etymology for octave Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Medieval Latin octava , from Latin, feminine of octavus eighth, from octo eight — more at eight. See word origin. The definition of an octave is a progression of eight notes on a musical scale, or the notes at the beginning and end of the progression.

A group of eight lines of verse; specif. Any group of eight. A group or series of eight. Consisting of eight, or an octave. Of the various practical solutions proposed, the one that triumphed was the idea of tuning 12 exactly equal semi-tones in an octave. When we simultaneously and continuously move the frequencies of the ten sinusoids to one octave above, we return to the same spectrum. Notes common to the harmony and the upper layers are ringed whether in the same octave or others.

On the left-hand side of the board there is a kind of keyboard which corresponds to five octaves of pitch. In order to get rid of it entirely, one has to increase the number of notes to more than per octave.

Movement during the performance of the structure might transform the pitch space within a range from one semitone to six octaves.

Some use is made of octaves and drones to vary the texture. These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Translations of octave in Chinese Traditional. See more. Need a translator? Translator tool.