Octave species various available intervals could be combined in any order, even restricting species to just the diatonic genus would result in twelve ways of dividing the octave (and his 17th-century editor, Marcus Meibom, pointed out that the actual number is 21), but "only seven species or forms are melodic and symphonic" . Those octave species that cannot be mapped onto the system are therefore rejected . In chant theory beginning in the 9th century, the "New Exposition" of the composite treatise called "Alia musica" developed an eightfold modal system from the seven diatonic octave species of ancient Greek theory, transmitted to
Octave an octave apart is therefore 2:1. Further octaves of a note occur at formula_1 times the frequency of that note (where "n" is an integer), such as 2, 4, 8, 16, etc. and the reciprocal of that series. For example, 55 Hz and 440 Hz are one and two octaves away from 110 Hz because they are (or formula_2) and 4 (or formula_3) times the frequency, respectively. The number of octaves between two frequencies is given by the formula: The octave is defined by ANSI as the unit of frequency level when the base of the logarithm is two. After