Quote:
Originally Posted by Neapolitan
"Atonality" means the piece does not have tonal center, there's no root note. Generally speaking, a music piece (with a tonal center) has a key (a root note A to G#), a scale/mode (Major, minor etc), a chord progression (e.g. I - IV - V etc), and a melody (and the notes in the melody generally corresponds to the notes in the chord) and form how sections of the piece or song is arranged (art music: ABAB folk:AABB or pop music: ABACAB i.e. verse chorus verse bridge verse chorus). I'm not familiar with atonal music, I don't listen to it. So I'm guessing it doesn't have some of those characteristics of tonal music, how much I don't know.
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But just because traditional tonality has used a notes closest relations of the harmonic series doesn't make a system that uses more distant relationships lack tonality. The only difference is that the music becomes more relative than functional while those relationships are still new to us.