Full and Satisfying Sound on your guitar
On the guitar playing in octaves has a full and satisfying sound. Some guitar players like to play a guitar solo using this sound which can sound okay beefed up with a bit of distortion. Obviously playing in octaves - that is two notes at the same time eight notes apart is inevitably going to sound fuller than one note on its own.
The Famous Guitar Players
A famous jazz guitar player who made the octave his trademark and an indispensable part of his playing style was Wes Montgomery.
The octave is also used in plenty of modern guitar styles. The punk band Green-day have often use it on guitar solos to beef up the sound and add excitement.
Playing octaves – An octave in music – two pitches which are eight notes away from each other in a scale - for instance the C major scale.
C d e f g a b C‘
The two C’s you see in the scale above give us this octave sound.
Double The Frequency double the Fun
The two notes sound similar to each other when played separately but one sounds higher than the other.
They also blend perfectly when played together. In physics the Higher C note is Double the frequency of the lower C.
Let’s take the A note that orchestral players use to tune up to. That’s that familiar droning sound you hear at the beginning of an orchestral concert. Traditionally the oboe (a reed instrument) plays this A note for the rest of the orchestra to tune up to. This A vibrates at a frequency of 440 Hz (Hertz) – the A an octave higher would vibrate at a frequency of 880 Hz.