Difference between note and tone: which one has only one frequency? What is note and tone both in physics and musical terms? Are the two used in different ways in the different fields or are they the same thing. Moreover, which one has only one frequency?
Well this one got me really confused: https://music.stackexchange.com/q/3262/.
 A: My understanding is:


*

*Note is written sign on a paper which gives you information about pitch
(i.e. frequency) and length of the sound. You see a note written on the paper.

*Tone referes to the pitch (frequency) of a sound which has name. Or, vice-vesa: if a certain sound with given frequency has a name (let it be "A"), then it is tone. You can say to a piano player: "Please, play the tone A" - and he will push the corresponding key. Tone does not contain the information about the time duration of the sound. The name ("A" in my example) is, of course, human convention.
Summarized: "Note" is written and has information about pitch and lenght. Because notes have names, a note correspondes to a tone. "Tone" is used when refering to hearing, it contains information about pitch and its name (e.g. tone "A"). So "note" contains more information than "tone", but is used in different context.
Both, note and tone, have a "basic" frequency - but these terms do not cointain information about musical instrument. So, if Fourier-transformed, each of these terms can refere to a sound composed of many sine terms (many single frequencies summed). In other words: non of these terms necessarily refers to a single-frequency sound (simple sine function).
A: Basically the note is a graphic sign, the tone is a sounding phenomenon.
That was simple and now it's getting a bit worse. There is no physical definition of tone since this is human sensation based. The closest would be a sine signal but I would protest against equivalence of this terms.
The definition varies a bit but generally acceptable is: "The tone is a sound of a clear pitch." That is a source of physical or signal requirings such as good signal to noise ratio, harmonic structure etc.
A: Both note and tone are terms used in music rather than physics. Both refer to the pitch of the sound but in music they include other information also. As far as physics is concerned all 3 terms mean essentially the same thing : a sound of a particular frequency.
In music, notes are usually identified by letter - eg middle C - instead of frequency (261.6 Hz). The term can also refer to duration - eg crotchet, quaver, minim. Tone also refers to the quality or timbre of the sound.
A tone played by a musical instrument - or even an electronic instrument - is rarely a single pure frequency. It usually includes overtones which are multiples of the fundamental frequency. The relative strength of the different overtones compared with the fundamental gives the tone its quality. Quality describes the difference between the same note played by different instruments, also by the same instrument under different conditions.
