Eight-foot pitch
Standard pitch designation
The system of describing organ pipes or harpsichord strings with a particular number of "feet" is a way of relating the pitch actually sounded by the pipe or the string to the conventional pitch assigned to the key that activates it.
Pipe pitch and octaves
A pipe or string designated as eight-foot pitch (8′) is sounded at the pitch ordinarily assigned to the key. For example, the key for A above middle C activates an eight-foot pipe or string that sounds the standard pitch of this A, such as 440 Hz for an instrument tuned to the A440 pitch standard. Pipes or strings identified as longer sound a lower pitch than the assigned key whereas pipes identified as shorter sound higher.
Doubling the length of a pipe or string halves its natural frequency, whereas halving the length of a pipe or string doubles its natural frequency. Examples include:
A sixteen-foot pitch (16′) pipe sounds a pitch one octave lower than its designated key. The A-440 key would sound at a pitch of 220 Hz.
A four-foot pitch (4′) pipe sounds a pitch one octave higher than its designated key. The A-440 key would sound at a pitch of 880 Hz.
A two-foot pitch (2′) pipe sounds a pitch two octaves higher than its designated key.
The public source identifies “Eight-foot pitch” as standard pitch designation. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Eight-foot, pitch and Standard.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5349033. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Eight-foot pitch” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.