Charles Thomas wrote in message ...


If that's the case then isn't something that pulses only once every
billion or so years really putting out a very low note?


In the very simple abstract sense, yes.

Well, if it just "pulses" once every billion years that not might fit
the description, but if it oscillates with a period of 1,000,000,000
years that _would_ count

Though since music as a concept is almost entirely a human endeavor,
perhaps it is misleading to refer to any frequency outside the range
of human hearing as a "note". It's probably easier to grasp if you
substitute the word "tone" for "note". (And I'm fairly confident that
if the astronomers could record this black hole & then transpose it up
30-some octaves, what we would hear would not sound much like a Bb
note, but more like a melange of noise & garbage that had a resonant
peak in the Bb neighborhood.)

Again, it's a thought experiment: If you can't hear it (or if you
aren't there to hear it) does it make a sound? Does music by
definition have to be heard?