Define tone

I was trying to define "tone" for my 8 year old daughter i.e. tone, tone, semi-tone... and realized I didn't have a clue. Can you help?

Peter

your daughter newbie or have know the tone before likes ABCDEFGA
if he is very newbie dont too much worry about it about tone or semitone
should know what tone he should press when read a sheet music
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if he have been know the tone then
one octav Cmajor is (CDEFGABC)
CD(tone) DE(tone) EF(semitone) FG(tone) GA(tone) AB(tone) BC(semitone)
so tone is C (blackkey) D
semitone is without black key
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that is only simple C major
if used other major or minor the theory is same but the position is not same
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i hope you understand tq

Simply put: a semitone is from any note to the next, and a tone is twice this distance, that is, we skip a note.

More complicated explanation (probably not for the average 8 year old):
Lets assume that f denotes the frequency of any given note. The frequency of the note one octave higher will then be 2*f. In other words, when one plays two notes, one of which has a frequency twice the frequency of the other, it is perceived by the brain as an octave. The important point is that the ratio of the frequency of any note to that of the note one octave below will always be 2. If we now divide the octave into 12 equal parts, that is, so that the ratio of the frequency of any note to the preceding note is a constant denoted by r, we need r^12=2, which gives r=2^1/12=1.059463, approximately. In other words when one plays two notes, one of which has a frequency 1.059463 times the frequency of the other, it is perceived by the brain as a semitone.

Tone is a concept central to music, and the term is often used in conjunction with pitch. The primary distinction between the two is that pitch refers to the actual note sounded, Tone is important to producing variation and quality in music. Anyone who has been to an opera can attest to the impact of tone on the feel or emotional quality of the music; the same is true of popular Music and Free music

Have you seen Andrews lesson about teaching children to play the piano? Its very good. Ill get you the link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzmrtC4XhGY

Well non-philosophical, in the means of Andrews video a tone is a specific definition of a relative difference expressible as a wave form.

Correct me if I am wrong, A3 is like 440 Hz, A4 is the double of that 880Hz. That means that A4 is twice as "fast" - or you can think of it as "fits into" A3 exactly twice. Imagen waves from the oceans, big ones that go slow or smaller ones that go faster (must not map to the "truth" just imagen). Between A3 and A4 there are many different wave forms, wave forms that are like 660hz so it will take 3 times an A3 and 2 times and 660hz tone to map to each other...

Semitones are definitions that describe a "smaller" increases/decreases in relation to another them - compared to "full" notes.

As the difference is smaller you can say as a rule of thumb that it takes longer for them to get into a matching pattern. like if you have lots of small numbers and you want to put one into another like 1.05 in 1.1 you have to multiply both very often.

If it takes longer it sounds queer, it "annoys" or "disturbs" you, it is not easy for you to see the pattern.

I would certainly try drawing waves like ocean waves, waves are a philosophical representation that at least works for the whole "industry" ;-)

p.s. there is some very early how to play piano video where Andrew actually swims with his hands over his piano keys trying to mimic waves - btw. sorry, non-native speaker here.