In a good conductor, sound not only travels faster but also travels farther before it dies away. A few solids are much poorer conductors of sound than air. Rubber, cork, cotton, and felt, for example, tend to absorb sound waves rather than transmit them. For that reason such substances are often used for soundproofing to deaden unwanted noises. The three basic properties of any pure sound are its pitch, its intensity, and its quality.
Pitch is simply the rate at which vibrations are produced.
One cycle is a complete vibration back and forth. The number of Hz is the frequency of the tone. The higher the frequency of a tone, the higher its pitch. When a saxophone is sounding the note A above middle C, the reed in its mouthpiece is vibrating at a frequency of 440 Hz. Another way to define the pitch of a tone is to give its wavelength.