Why 12 notes in Western music?
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Why 12 notes in Western music?
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Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#2There was 12 notes before there was even division. It was Bach that pushed equal temprament (equal spacing). Before that, the ratios were actual ratios (perfect 4ths and 5ths), though you couldn't just transpose music and expect to sound good.
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#3I'm not a music theory expert, just a guy who has played guitar by ear for 28 years.
Equal temperament is definitely a compromise .. I find myself constantly trying to "sweeten" the tuning of my guitar strings relative to the song/key I am playing.
You can tune your guitar with the most accurate guitar tuner in the world (I have strobe tuners by Sonic Research and Peterson), and some things still just sound out of tune.
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#4We've seen this before: and it's likely wrong. He ended his experiment too soon at 24 divisions, but even a little googling should have told him to go to 31, which is more accurate than 12.
The 12-note scale long predates the notion of just or equal temperament.
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#5There was 12 notes before there was even division. It was Bach that pushed equal temprament (equal spacing). Before that, the ratios were actual ratios (perfect 4ths and 5ths), though you couldn't just transpose music and expect to sound good.
Pythagoras is believed to have come up with the just intonation (exact rational) figures. At the time, irrational numbers were distrusted and despised so, as you noted, the perfect fifth really was exactly 3:2.
But it’s likely that a 12-tone system won out because lg(3/2) is so close to 7/12, even if this was never a conscious decision. 19, 31, and 53 are also credible candidates per continued fraction expansion, but unwieldy for physical instruments (although some computer music does use 53-TET).
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#6There was 12 notes before there was even division. It was Bach that pushed equal temprament (equal spacing). Before that, the ratios were actual ratios (perfect 4ths and 5ths), though you couldn't just transpose music and expect to sound good.
IIRC the system Bach was pushing wasn't actually equal temperament, but "well temperament" which was some sort of compromise between equal temperament and having pure fifths everywhere. The result was that all twelve keys sounded acceptable, but some keys had purer fifths or thirds than others. Some musicians/scholars say that Bach composed the different preludes and fugues specifically to use the resulting different characters of the different keys to the best possible advantage. I can't speak to this personally, I keep my piano at equal temperament ;)
(Big fan of your videos btw)
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#712 notes tuned in equal temperament is a workable compromise between musical expressiveness, harmonic ratio accuracy, readability, and finger precision.
It's also an established standard, which is a huge deal because it means you have access to a huge established repertoire.
A 31-TET acoustic piano would be huge, extremely complicated, and probably unplayable. Smaller instruments mostly just aren't practical. In theory you can play with more precision on fretless instruments (including strings), but it's hard enough to get beginners to pitch 12-TET accurately.
Electronic microtonal keyboards exist, but they require extra learning and the music you can make with them isn't compelling enough to justify the complexity.
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#812 notes, 12 hours, 12 months., even 12 monkeys.
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#9I'm not a music theory expert, just a guy who has played guitar by ear for 28 years. Equal temperament is definitely a compromise .. I find myself constantly trying to "sweeten" the tuning of my guitar strings relative to the song/key I am playing. You can tune your guitar with the most accurate guitar tuner in the world (I have strobe tuners by Sonic Research and Peterson), and some things still just sound out of tu…
There are guitars with frets that aren't straight lines that try to address some of the problems:
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#1012 notes tuned in equal temperament is a workable compromise between musical expressiveness, harmonic ratio accuracy, readability, and finger precision. It's also an established standard, which is a huge deal because it means you have access to a huge established repertoire. A 31-TET acoustic piano would be huge, extremely complicated, and probably unplayable. Smaller instruments mostly just aren't practical. In theo…
Thats a decent explanation but in other cultures like Turkish music you have 9 other notes in the space of one half step so losing those extra notes will make the music sound like faked Turkish music without those extra pieces.