The system of the Turkish Classical Music is a bit different:
* https://www.sufi.gen.tr/nota-sistemi/en
* http://www.turkishmusicportal.org/en/types-of-turkish-music
Why 12 notes in Western music?
31–40 of 164 posts
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#32"Flying Microtonal Banana" - because why not fret a whole bunch of guitars for 24-Tet and record an album?
https://guitar.com/news/music-news/king-gizzard-stu-mackenzi...
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#33Micro-Tonal bands such as King Gizzard play around/bend the rules on the whole 12 notes in music thing.
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#3412 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…
There used to be a lot of tempers floating around. For example a lot bach's music is not really supposed to be played in modern equal temper https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2020/what-does-the-well-tempere... .
I consider the 12 tone scale to be a technology. The historical temperaments were compromise solutions to the problem of getting a useable scale within the skills and patience of the musician. A harpsichord had to be tuned before every performance, by the musician.
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#35I usually think of it as someone hundreds of years ago playing with a tighly stretched string and noticing stuff:
- Half a string's length is the same thing, just higher
- The harmonic at half a string is the same thing, just higher
- The harmonics at 3:2 and 4:3 are really loud and distinct
- If you chop up the rest of the string at the same interval as the 3:2 and 4:3, some have strong harmonics that match tones on the string, some don't
Then I figure with the Octave, 5th, 4th, and M3 as the strongest harmonics that matches other lengths (or octaves thereof), they went from there...
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#36Another possible explanation, which I'm surprised the author didn't go through is the "Circle of Fifths" which basically says: Since Fifths sound so great, why not just keep doing that? When we get to the next octave, then come back down. If we get to a place that's "pretty darn close" to another note, then stop. The Python explanation looks like: f = 440 for i in range(13): print(i,f) f = f * 3/2 if f > 880: f=f/2.0…
are the post and your comment not mathematically equivalent statements?
Its the use of the musical concept of Fifths that's the key here: We just derive the notes from what sounds good, not what makes sense mathematically? I'm just using Python to mirror the author's analysis -- you can derive "12 notes" pretty much just by using your ear and listening to the Fifths.
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#37There 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…
This is my understanding too. I have a Kurzweil K2500 keyboard from around 1999 that has a bunch of the alternate tunings, including three from that era. The Bach-era tunings weren't what we know of as "equal temperament." Truly equal temperament didn't come around until well after Beethoven was dead. I've always interpreted the "Well-Tempered" in Bach's title to mean that he was brining out the strength of each key. Some of those keys sound really "out of tune" to modern ears -- I have a friend with perfect pitch who legit can't listen to them.
Owen Jorgensen's "Tuning the Historical Temperaments by Ear" is good bedtime reading on this topic, if you have a couple hundred bucks burning a hole in your pocket. https://www.amazon.com/Tuning-historical-temperaments-ear-ei...
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#38Micro-Tonal bands such as King Gizzard play around/bend the rules on the whole 12 notes in music thing.
Familiar with the band, but not examples of this. Can you recommend any tracks that demonstrate?
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#3912 notes, 12 hours, 12 months., even 12 monkeys.
> The duodecimal system, which is the use of 12 as a division factor for many ancient and medieval weights and measures, including hours, probably originates from Mesopotamia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal#Advocacy_and_%22doz...
Yep. 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 12 hours. To the Sumerian mind that was apparently as nice and round as 100 seconds, 100 minutes, 20 hours.
60 is the smallest composite number with three prime factors, and divides evenly by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30. Decimal only divides by 2 and 5. Makes arithmetic by hand a lot easier. Duodecimal has a similar advantage.
Re: Why 12 notes in Western music?
#40We'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.
According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32641527, 12 is substantially more accurate than 31. 41 is slightly more accurate, and 53 is a lot more accurate.