Why Does Music Only Use 12 Different Notes?

Why does Western music divide the octave into 12 different notes? Why not 13, or 19 or 24 notes? For such a simple sounding question, the answer is actually a tangle of history, physics and human preference. Get ready for some serious music theory!

Thank you to Modartt for gifting me a copy of their amazing Pianoteq software. Find out more here: https://www.modartt.com/pianoteq

Thank you to Fred Scalliet for adding French subtitles to this video!

Sources:
Gamelan Music:    • Sound Tracker - Gamelan (Indonesia)  
12Tone talking 12TET:    • TET for Tat: Why Do We Use 12 Notes?  
Where does the 12-tone scale come from:    • Where does the 12-tone scale come from?  
Audio Spectrum (AdminOfThisSite):    • 20Hz to 20kHz (Human Audio Spectrum)  
Perception of Octaves: https://www.quantamagazine.org/percep...
Playable Harmonic Series: https://alexanderchen.github.io/harmo...
Octave circularity in the auditory brain: http://www.neuroscience-of-music.se/e...

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