Synthetic Music

You can create synthetic music using MATLAB by creating and playing a sequence of short bursts of sinusoids. Use the table below for a reference of the notes.

Note	C	D	E	F	G	A	B	C
Frequency (Hz)	262	294	330	349	392	440	494	523

For example, the following MATLAB code generates and plays the scale from middle C. Click here to hear the scale.

fs = 8000; % sets the sampling frequency
t = 0:1/fs:0.25; % length of each note
tspace = .05; % length of pause between notes
fr = 2^(1/12); % the frequency ratio between neighboring keys
A4 = 440; % set this as the reference key to determine other keys
B4 = A4*fr^2;
C5 = A4*fr^3;
C4 = A4*fr^(-9);
D4 = A4*fr^(-7);
E4 = A4*fr^(-5);
F4 = A4*fr^(-4);
G4 = A4*fr^(-2);
xspace = zeros(size(tspace)); % set pause
x = [cos(C4*2*pi*t),xspace, cos(D4*2*pi*t),xspace,cos(E4*2*pi*t),...
xspace,cos(F4*2*pi*t),xspace,cos(G4*2*pi*t),xspace,...
cos(A4*2*pi*t),xspace,cos(B4*2*pi*t),xspace,cos(C5*2*pi*t)];
sound(x,fs);