Pitch is the relative highness or lowness of a sound. Flutes, violins and female voices are higher in pitch while bass guitars, bassoons and male voices are lower in pitch. Some objects and instruments don't make sounds with a specific pitch, cymbals are one example, breaking glass is another. Composers make use of a range of pitches to make their music full and interesting. A basic example is a three piece rock band. Bass guitar plays the low notes, guitar the high notes and the drums provide sounds without specific pitches. 

Click here to hear the notes written above You'll hear the sound of a person playing from the low notes of the piano (on the left) to the high notes (on the right). There are 88 notes on a piano but only 29 notes here. So, if you can get to a piano you might want to play them all in order from high to low or low to high.)

Changes in pitch are caused by differences in the frequency at which a sound wave vibrates, measured in cycles per second (cps). These samples of four tones of different pitch are shown with their wave patterns. Note that as the frequency increases, the pitch also increases, and the tone sounds higher. We organize series of pitches into groups called scales. You know: do, re, mi, fa, so , la, ti, do!

This diagram shows the approximate range of several instruments compared to the range of the piano. As you can see, the piano can play more notes than practically any other instrument. Only the harp, which has 49 strings and 7 foot pedals comes close. The instruments in blue are string instruments, the brown instruments are woodwinds, yellow are the brasses and the timpani is a percussion instrument capable of producing a low range of notes.

In addition to pitch, timbre (sounds like tambourine without the -ine) is really important in music as well. Timbre is like the fingerprint of a sound. No two people or things sound exactly the same. For instance, differences in height, weight, size, even the shape of your mouth and teeth combine to create the sound of your voice. Even two guitars made in the same factory, by the same people on the same day would have enough subtle differences in their wood and other parts to sound different.

In the broadest sense, this allows us to tell the difference between obviously different things, like a piano and a guitar. More specifically, it allows us to tell the difference between more similar things, like two peoples voices, or the siren on an ambulance and a car alarm.