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A study of musical scales (2017)

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Re: A study of musical scales (2017)

#41

Post by pessimizer »

lmm wrote: post #10
galaxyLogic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with microtone tuning you reach a point where people will hear beats instead of distinct tones) That's a fantastic notion. Music consists of rhythm melody and harmony. Harmony is created by relations of frequencies. But Rhythm itself IS a frequency, and there can be several overlapping rhythms in a piece of music. Melodic steps are also ratios between frequencies, but pieces of melody also repeat in a piece of musi…

"Beats" is a specific term of art. It's not related to rhythm.

It's a term of art describing the regular rhythmic peaks when discordant notes are played together.

Re: A study of musical scales (2017)

#42

Post by tomca32 »

anonymoushn wrote: post #37
tomca32 wrote: post #19

> You can't play a song in C minor, because that would require three flats. So instead you play the song with A as the root (A B C D E F G). That scale is a mode of the major scale, called the Aeolian Mode. This paragraph confused me until I realized it's supposed to say "That scale is a mode of the MINOR scale". Other than that I thoroughly enjoyed this. Never thought of a scale as a bitmask before.

The article is correct here. The C major scale (C D E F G A B) has 7 modes, and A minor (A B C D E F G) is one of them.

oh I see, I think you might be right. Thanks for the correction

Re: A study of musical scales (2017)

#43

Post by kaoD »

lmm wrote: post #10
galaxyLogic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with microtone tuning you reach a point where people will hear beats instead of distinct tones) That's a fantastic notion. Music consists of rhythm melody and harmony. Harmony is created by relations of frequencies. But Rhythm itself IS a frequency, and there can be several overlapping rhythms in a piece of music. Melodic steps are also ratios between frequencies, but pieces of melody also repeat in a piece of musi…

"Beats" is a specific term of art. It's not related to rhythm.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(acoustics)

Re: A study of musical scales (2017)

#44

Post by tsegratis »

rollcat wrote: post #25
exporectomy wrote: post #3

A bit of a tangent, but what I always found confusing about music theory is which parts are arbitrary historical legacy and which are fundamental to human enjoyment of music. 12 notes in a scale? Their particular frequencies? That whole multiplying and dividing business? Why the letters are in the wrong order. Why have sharps and flats instead of just more letters? I always get stuck wondering how much of this is jus…

If you feel like the other commenters clarified anything for you, I'd like to throw a new bit of confusion back into the mix ;) https://strandbergguitars.com/eu/boden-true-temperament/ this guitar actually sounds more "in tune" than a standard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-penQWPHJzI

Nice guitars and certainly nice strings. Fun, and in tune

To my ears, I'm hearing a normal equal temperment tuning, with the normal slight disharmonies over the chords...

Maybe somebody better than me can give another opinion?

--

Edit: I was looking at the website, rather than your linked video. Yeah, that guitar with wobbley frets definitely has slightly better tuning (imho). For guitar (and equal temperment) generally, some chords will always sound flatter than others, so a concern is presumably that guitar sounds worse as you move away from Cmaj/Emaj songs??

But in any case, fun

Re: A study of musical scales (2017)

#45

Post by imperistan »

tomca32 wrote: post #19

> You can't play a song in C minor, because that would require three flats. So instead you play the song with A as the root (A B C D E F G). That scale is a mode of the major scale, called the Aeolian Mode. This paragraph confused me until I realized it's supposed to say "That scale is a mode of the MINOR scale". Other than that I thoroughly enjoyed this. Never thought of a scale as a bitmask before.

Aeolian mode is not a mode of the minor scale. It is that mode of the major scale we commonly refer to as the minor scale. So if you call it a mode, its a mode of the major scale. Or you could call it a minor scale itself. But not a mode of the minor scale

Re: A study of musical scales (2017)

#46

Post by tomca32 »

imperistan wrote: post #45
tomca32 wrote: post #19

> You can't play a song in C minor, because that would require three flats. So instead you play the song with A as the root (A B C D E F G). That scale is a mode of the major scale, called the Aeolian Mode. This paragraph confused me until I realized it's supposed to say "That scale is a mode of the MINOR scale". Other than that I thoroughly enjoyed this. Never thought of a scale as a bitmask before.

Aeolian mode is not a mode of the minor scale. It is that mode of the major scale we commonly refer to as the minor scale. So if you call it a mode, its a mode of the major scale. Or you could call it a minor scale itself. But not a mode of the minor scale

Got it. You’re right thanks for the explanation.

Re: A study of musical scales (2017)

#47

Post by galaxyLogic »

janstice wrote: post #33
galaxyLogic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with microtone tuning you reach a point where people will hear beats instead of distinct tones) That's a fantastic notion. Music consists of rhythm melody and harmony. Harmony is created by relations of frequencies. But Rhythm itself IS a frequency, and there can be several overlapping rhythms in a piece of music. Melodic steps are also ratios between frequencies, but pieces of melody also repeat in a piece of musi…

Any time you feel like you have too much money and spare time, you should get into modular synths - I think you might really dig it.

Precisely what I was thinking of, how you can start with a low frequency oscillator and turn it up, until it becomes a note. Rhythm turns into note. Multiple rhythms turn into harmony.

Re: A study of musical scales (2017)

#48

Post by goto11 »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #5
exporectomy wrote: post #3

A bit of a tangent, but what I always found confusing about music theory is which parts are arbitrary historical legacy and which are fundamental to human enjoyment of music. 12 notes in a scale? Their particular frequencies? That whole multiplying and dividing business? Why the letters are in the wrong order. Why have sharps and flats instead of just more letters? I always get stuck wondering how much of this is jus…

> 12 notes in a scale? Their particular frequencies? That whole multiplying and dividing business? Why the letters are in the wrong order. Why have sharps and flats instead of just more letters? The number of notes and the ratios between their frequencies are fundamental. The rest are historical accidents. A good place to start is David Benson's 'Music: a Mathematical Offering'. Available free online here: https://ho…

The number of notes is also historical tradition, e.g. pentatonic vs heptatonic.

Re: A study of musical scales (2017)

#49

Post by OscarCunningham »

goto11 wrote: post #48
OscarCunningham wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 12 notes in a scale? Their particular frequencies? That whole multiplying and dividing business? Why the letters are in the wrong order. Why have sharps and flats instead of just more letters? The number of notes and the ratios between their frequencies are fundamental. The rest are historical accidents. A good place to start is David Benson's 'Music: a Mathematical Offering'. Available free online here: https://ho…

The number of notes is also historical tradition, e.g. pentatonic vs heptatonic.

Sure, but it's based on something real (2^17 ~ 3^12) rather than being a pure historical accident.

Re: A study of musical scales (2017)

#50

Post by thenoblesunfish »

Rochus wrote: post #30
thenoblesunfish wrote: post #12

We get a post like this every couple of weeks, it seems. Given the audience here, I understand the impulse - it's very fun to see the structure, and it really helps you understand the framework upon which a lot of western music is built. But beware that this is not a way to actually understand what is interesting or compelling about "music", because you'll notice that the first step in all these articles is to reduce…

Representing music in all of its relevant dimensions (scale, time, polyphony, melodic patterns, dynamics, etc.) is a very interesting and still not optimally solved problem. It is e.g. relevant for machine learning based systems for musical composition or improvisation; with transformers there was a big progress made compared to nearly thirty years of stagnation. And this is not about "exotic" compositions associated…

I completely agree that it's very interesting. But it's a Glass Bead Game you're playing. A fun game, a game which can make you a better composer, even but one should not be fooled into thinking that this is really essentially to how the music you love was created. One of the few things I think I know about music is that good way to make it is to take whatever system you have and subvert it a little bit.
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