Lord Larehip

Yes, it is. If you want to learn music theory, go to college or a conservatory. I know you haven't because you don't know the difference between a note and pitch. Go to college and you definitely will learn it.

anathematized_one

Actually, to say an octave is 7 or 8 tones IS dead wrong. You can span an octave in any number of notes up to 12.

Within those 12 notes that make an octave, 7 are played for a diatonic scale.

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Sardonicus
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Lord Larehip

That's an octave INTERVAL not an octave scale!

anathematized_one

I do know and I have studied and played music for well over 12 years, to include university courses.

7 tones out of 12 notes is a diatonic.

And you are talking about spreading incorrect bs. Literally everyone here will correct you on that.

An octave is 12 tones, a diatonic scale is 7 specific interval-related tones within that octave.

If western music was based on the pentatonic rather than the diatonic, you could say it is 5. It is not always 8, it depends on the type of scale.

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CrazyVegn

Yeah why? lol
One is out to prove everyone wrong and no one is necessarily wrong.

Necromancer

EVERYBODY is a music critic these days...

GuitarBizarre

My understanding of all of this, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I rarely deal with strict notation or form.

Note = The musical notes, all of them, ABCDEFG, and their respective sharps and Flats. If referring to a specific note in a specific octave, in isolation of musical context, the musical notes, by octave, become specified, IE Low C, Middle C, High C, or A1 A2 A3, where the numbers refer to the octaves of the notes (Each numbered octave usually being split at the C).
Tone= Tone or semitone - another term for intervals one note apart, or two notes apart. Also referred to as being one half step apart or one step apart.
Pitch = The specific Hz frequency of a sound, IE, instruments tuned to A440, are tuned to a 440Hz pitch.

You can use all 3 of these to refer to notes, and people will generally understand you, but its a little confusing in some situations. Honestly though, mostly semantics and preference as to whether someone says notes or tones, or even pitches, since there aren't a ton of real-life situations where the other person will be confused by using them interchangeably.

Interval = The distance between two notes played either simultaneously or next to each other.

For example, a note of A (note being defined as above), played with a note of E, is an interval of a perfect 5th. A note of A, played with a note of D, is a perfect 4th.

The names of the intervals is derived from their position within a traditional major/minor scale, where if starting on A, E is the 5th note you would play as you ascended the scale, and D the 4th. (Since this gap exists in both Major and minor scales, these intervals are known as "perfect". Intervals such as the 3rd, which is in a different place in a Major Scale or Minor Scale, are usually defined as major or minor 3rd.

If you are playing in a scale or context other than the basic major scale, intervals cease to be simply perfect 5ths or Perfect 4ths or Major/Minor 3rds and so on, and you get things like augmented or diminished intervals, the descriptions of which serve to denote how those intervals differ from the major/minor scale's standard arrangements.


Scale - A grouping of notes separated by specific intervals. (Notes as described above), repeated by octave. This can be any number of notes, for Example Pentatonic being 5, A traditional major or minor would contain 7 notes, a full chromatic scale would contain 12 notes. (A, B flat, B, C, D flat, D, E flat, E, F, G flat, G, and A flat).

Scales are odd in that they refer to the intervals between the notes, and not the notes themselves. A major scale starts at a given root note, and ascends in a given sequence of intervals. A major scale for example ascends by a tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone. A minor scale ascends in a pattern of tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone. They can both start on a note of A, and repeat across all octaves.

The actual notes within that sequence are defined by the root note, that which is defined as first in the scale. (Intervals, as we discussed before, are also discussed based on this, at least when using the major scale.) There *are* strange things that can be done with this, such as with the various modes, and with "outside" playing, but those are something of a multi-headed beast and can get relatively complicated very quickly.


Octave = A doubling of frequency. For example, a guitar is traditionally tuned to a note of A, A being defined as 440Hz. An octave above that note is another note of A, at 880Hz. Another octave above that, is A1760Hz.

An octave of a scale, is exactly the same. The same scale repeats, with the same notes, but all the frequencies are doubled and therefore the notes are all one octave higher. As before, the scale can realistically have any number of notes, as long as the intervals between them are the same leading up to the next octave. Commonly, 5 notes in a pentatonic scale, 7 in a traditional, diatonic, major or minor scale (And the modes thereof), and a chromatic scale would have 12. Other, more esoteric scales, might have more or less, such as blues scales, which have "6", and one of those is a fluid, which is why you often hear blues music use quarter tone bends and so on, which is a peculiarity of blues.

You can also get musical systems, such as indian music, which deal with microtones, and split the octave into more than the traditional 12 semitones, such as systems with as 19 or more possible notes, though I don't know how many notes these musical systems tend to use to define the scale.

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anathematized_one

Middle-Eastern music has a 24 tone system but they don't view the extras as micro-tones.

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Lord Larehip

Tell me why we have perfect intervals. Why can't a 5th, for example, be major or minor?

Scales are not laid out this way. It's customary, and far more useful, to use numbers to represent the scale degrees or positions:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

In a major scale, the two half-steps occur between 3 and 4 and also 7 and 8.
In a minor scale, the two half-steps occur between 2 and 3 and also 5 and 6.
For every major, there is a corresponding or relative minor. Both scales use the identical notes.

The term root note is used for the lowest note in a chord. It's customary to refer to the notes in a scale as:

1. Tonic
2. Super tonic
3. Mediant
4. Subdominant
5. Dominant
6. Submediant
7. Subtonic/Leading tone

We usually call a minor 7th the subtonic and the major 7th the leading tone. Each one of these positions has certain task to perform. The tonic is the foundation note of the scale. The subdominant and dominant are called that precisely because they are the dominant notes in the scale. They are also inverses of each other. They are the twin pillars holding the scale up. The submediant and mediant add color to the scale via major and minor intervals. The leading tone adds restlessness to the scale and wants to propel it back to the tonic again so that the scale can rest. We say that it wants to resolve. Likewise, the supertonic wants to lead way from the tonic.

Now you may wonder why the mediant at position 3 comes before the submediant at 6. It's because the straight-line scale we are accustomed to is misleading as hell. The tonic is really the note around which the others revolve so it is in the center. The dominant is a 5th above and the subdominant is a 5th below it. The closest notes to the tonic are the supertonic a step above and the leading tone a half-step below it. Both are restless and want to lead away from or back to the tonic. The mediant is a major 3rd above the tonic and the submediant is a minor 3rd below but since they are squeezed between the supertonic and leading tone and the dominant and subdominant, they are in the middle or median positions.

So a scale is like a solar system rather than a ladder (scale is derived from the Italian scala or ladder). The tonic is like the sun in the center, the supertonic and leading tone flank the tonic. Then the mediant and submediant flank the supertonic and leading otne and then the dominant and subdominant flank the mediant and submediant.

Hope that wasn't too confusing.

Scales are assembled using the Fibonacci Sequence. This sequence starts off with two numbers and the third is the sum of the first two. For example:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, etc. Notice how each number is the sum of the two before it? Scales follow this same sequence--5 (pentatonic), 7 (diatonic), 12 (chromatic). The next scale would be 19 notes and then 31 after that. They have built 19-tone keyboards but they are unruly. The cool thing about the Fibonacci Sequence is that the closer to infinity one gets, the more closer any two adjacent numbers in the sequence divide out to Phi or phi. Phi is 1.618 (it's actually irrational) and phi is 0.618 and is the reciprocal or Phi. The same is true of the scales, the closer to infinity they get, the closer any two adjacent scales will divided out to Phi or phi. It's a characteristic of the Fibonacci Sequence. You can look around the web for all the cool stuff there is about Phi and phi and the Golden Section and the Golden Mean and the Golden Spiral. It's really neat.

GuitarBizarre

I did, read my post through and see if you can spot where.

I'm really not sure why you feel the need to explain all of this just because I defined a scale as a sequence of intervals and told everyone what those intervals were for the two most common scales. You're just repeating what I said in a different (much longer) way.

Its true that semantically the root is the lowest note of a given chord, but there's nothing wrong with referring to the first note of a scale as the root instead of the tonic.

All of this is true - (in the germanic tradition and those informed specifically by it), but you really need to stop phrasing all of this as if it is immutable fact. Music isn't about knowing the rules so you can abide by them, its about knowing the rules so that you can break them properly. When you go on forever about a note or scale degrees "function", always discuss it on the basis that this is a common, but not the only, way to deal with it.

What absolute ****. There's a significant difference between "Based on" and "Coincidentally resembles". The fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio crop up absolutely everywhere, and its very, very rare that the intent has ever been to apply it in advance - Its far more common to simply find that the way something has already been done, consciously or unconsciously resembles or takes advantage of the sequence, not the other way around. (Unless you're James Maynard Keenan and pals, in which case you just write songs around it to be flashy to math geeks).

Also, you'll note that the scales I noted specifically, only went up to 12. I stated, very clearly in the next paragraph, that those indian musical systems split the OCTAVE into 19 (Or more) notes, not that they necessarily use a 19 note scale. You responded to a comment about the division of the octave, by rambling about the fibonacci sequences supposed (not actual) relationship to scales.

The musical notes used in western music are based on the division of the octave according to the harmonic series. Of course, this is imperfect, as the harmonic series is actually uneven, and would stretch the octave beyond an exact doubling of frequency if followed exactly, so rather than do that, the harmonic series is "tempered" by moving the exact frequencies of the tuned notes very slightly in order to both rectify that issue and maintain the consonance between as many notes as possible in as many contexts.

As these are compromises, there are varying temperaments which have been used over time - Pythagorean temperament is a sequence of 3:2 ratios of pitch, equal temperament is the system used in most modern western music, and well temperament is primarily used for historically correct recordings of older pieces. There are others but they're rare to hear.

Of course other cultures will use their own temperaments in their traditional musics too, and may even choose to divide the octave into greater or lesser numbers of discrete tones. Typically this will have precisely no relation to the fibonacci sequence unless by complete accident.

Oh, and you mean "Unwieldy", not unruly.

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