why our scales have seven notes, part 2

[IncarnateX]

well, this is productive...

why dont you both just leave it.
please

Yeah you are right Vurt. Of course. Guess I have become oversensitive to jerks entering the thread and expose themselves as experts and at the same time imply that all who are serious about the topic are idiots.

Well, It is just KVR and even after four years and a KVRAF title I have not got used to it , it seems

Sorry. Mea Culpa. Should have ignored it. Let us return to topic.

[murnau]

well, this is productive...

why dont you both just leave it.
please

good advice..please folks, it's bad enough when it's on topic in here..
leave moms and everything else out.

okay bluedad - i muted this moron from outerspace who insult other people personally but complain to be called an idiot (where again in my first post?)

[IncarnateX]

but complain to be called an idiot (where again in my first post?)

Your extensive use of lol icons may that be in your first post regarding the topic in general or your "questions" to me. Simple as that. If you do not know what they signify in such contexts do not use them at all if you want to avoid trouble.

[Tricky-Loops]

@murnau

This is the music theory forum, also called "war zone". Before participating, please ask a moderator to softly knock on the door!

[jancivil]

i wonder which "development is not over" you talking about, we use the same scales like the classical composers 200 years ago.

'We'? I suppose you're unaware, but there are people that use, or even 'develop' material other than that. As a hint, the lol after this kind of remark can rub people the wrong way, it seems to say 'I'm ridiculing your remark' while stating you must believe development of musical materials has reached a stopping point 200 years ago in at least this way. Which is ignorant. It can't be that novel or esoteric on KVR to hear of 'microtones' for instance.

[murnau]

i wonder which "development is not over" you talking about, we use the same scales like the classical composers 200 years ago.

'We'? I suppose you're unaware, but there are people that use, or even 'develop' material other than that. As a hint, the lol after this kind of remark can rub people the wrong way, it seems to say 'I'm laughing at you' after what is really a show of ignorance. It can't be that novel or esoteric on KVR to hear of 'microtones' for instance.

i'm aware of the different other approaches but let be serious: to 99,9% the people listen and use the same scales they listen and use 200 years ago. to say "development is not over" when it is for the majority is not true. the question from OP was "why our scales.." bringing exotic approaches into this thread isn't of any help.

in short: can you tell me what changed the last 200 years in music theory for the majority of the people? if i go back to topic i must say: nothing, the scales are the same, still seven notes and so the rest (counterpoint etc) and how it looks it will be as long humans exist.

ps. and the in the one post you qouted was indeed "i'm laughing at you" because this guy jumped out of his pants for nothing before.

..and the first was to not take my question to seriously please, but it happend to turn in exact the opposite for one person here.

[IncarnateX]

ps. and the was indeed "i'm laughing at you" because this guy jumped out of his pants for nothing before.

Yes absolutely nothing apart from your laughings at us all

why we have scales please and notes?

You are as innocent as a catholic boys choir

[IncarnateX]

i'm aware of the different other approaches but let be serious: to 99,9% the people listen and use the same scales they listen and use 200 years ago. to say "development is not over" when it is for the majority is not true.

Oh yeah. 99,9% of the world's populations listen to Britney Spears, which uses the exactly same scales as 200 years ago. Every hit could have been written by Beethoven himself (because the scales determine the music, right?).

All modern approaches violating Beethoovian principles e.g. 12 tone music, microtonal music, jazz, fusion, World music, techno, ambient and lots of other experimental approaches are only listened to by 0.01% of world population and are therefore exotic and not to be recognized as music or developments at all?

Even if your ad hoc statistics were true, has it ever occurred to you that development of music may have nothing to do with quantity? 30 years ago such music as techno (which can be highly atonal or microtonal) was underground but now it appears everywhere for commercial purposes. Was it transferred from non-music to music in this process because of the number of people listening to it?

Geez! At least it is easy to spot who the reactionaries are in this thread. The true enemies of music as a free art form. Well that is actually your own loss and not the music lovers'.

[Sendy]

@murnau

This is the music theory forum, also called "war zone". Before participating, please ask a moderator to softly knock on the door!

ARE YOU A MUSICIAN? LET ME SEE YOUR MUSIC FACE!

YOU DON'T SCARE ME! WORK ON IT!

[jancivil]

i'm aware of the different other approaches but let be serious: to 99,9% the people listen and use the same scales they listen and use 200 years ago. to say "development is not over" when it is for the majority is not true.

Oh yeah. 99,9% of the world's populations listen to Britney Spears, which uses the exactly same scales as 200 years ago. Every hit could have been written by Beethoven himself (because the scales determine the music, right?).

let's be serious and go for total argumentum ad populum AMIRIGHT

murnau, you have revised what you did in this thread on both points: you came in with the lols|teh snark out of the blue, not following any pants incident, and then you revised the statement you made in support of the lols. First, "the development isn't over" is to be laughed at since obviously it is, then it's no, seriously it's that most people don't care.

No one owes you anything here.

[Musicologo]

After reading some valuable answers and redefining my own way of thinking about the problem, now I think I have more questions than answers...

It's interesting to understand the process of hexachords in gregorian times. I'm left to wonder *WHY* they used do-re-mi-fa-sol-la. I mean why use a half-tone from the third-to-fourth? It just seems arbitrary as anything else.

And again, does this description really represented the singing practice? Or were they influencing the singing pratice?

I'm also left to wonder what were people really singing back then. and Playing.

And so, when I think of that my question arises in the terms, how technology influenced the repertoire.

I mean, if you have a lira that plays a bunch of sounds your repertoire is influenced by the sounds it makes.

If you have a flute making a bunch of sounds your repertoire is influenced by the sounds it is able to make.

Were already conventions regarding that at some point? Or a shepherd in the VIth century carving a flute was just doing it randomly and playing around with whatever it came out from it?

I ask this because I've just bought a "flute" as a recuerdo in trip to an indian reservation, and when I arrived home I actually tried to play it and it seems purely random tuned. So when I make music with it, is trial and error and I have no clue what scales am I playing. If I were asked to "fix it" or "compose with it" I knew how to memorize the tune, but I don't know if I would be able to "transcribe it" the way we "do now" into a tuned system of staffs and 12 tones. Moreover, I don't know or even care if anyone else was able to "reproduce it" the same way or just "approximate".
So one of my big questions is what happened back then regarding reproduction. How "exact" it was? Or was just "approximate", since recording was impossible and I believe instrument building was not that exact regarding proportions?... Probably the values associated with music practice were also different so even "tuning" was not much of a value but more "social function".


Also, the technology gave me power to now I define my own scales with whomever tones I want and define their frequencies...

I can decide "I'm going to make a scale with 4 basic frequencies, let's give them names by crescent order: a = 58hz, b = 71 hz, c = 99hz, d = 103 hz. Now I can make music with this." I'm atually learning to compose this way now. So it's a good thing.


I think theory can describe what I am doing afterwards. But is not able to describe WHY I am doing this now unless in a very etnographic and speculative way.

So I guess the OP question must be around these terms...

And this also confirms that the possibilites for sound creation, fixation and reproduction are so different nowadays that the repertoires and social functions will keep evolving in unpredictable ways.

[murnau]

just playing around with the same seven notes scales beethoven and britney used as well as can be found in jazz and fusion and ambient and "world music". pretty immortal progressions i would say.

always nicer then btw.

[aciddose]

http://xkcd.com/793/

Funny thing is most times they're actually right. It's that fundamental mathematics of the universe thing.

[aciddose]

I can decide "I'm going to make a scale with 4 basic frequencies, let's give them names by crescent order: a = 58hz, b = 71 hz, c = 99hz, d = 103 hz. Now I can make music with this." I'm atually learning to compose this way now. So it's a good thing.

You should find in doing so that you naturally lean toward selecting perfect ratios. Often they'll closely approximate 12TET.

Some would seem to argue this is by random chance, "evolution" yet without any analogous "strong (those who reproduce) survive".

Others like myself believe this is human nature and a consequence of natural rules at play which apply selective pressure to this evolutionary process leading up to a particular goal or set of goals known as zeros or roots, the "stable" positions vs. the remaining "unstable" field.

The fact that we moved from a focus on hexachord and vocals to another system focusing on instruments and that one system beats the other when used for its particular purpose doesn't surprise me.

The idea that strongly directed evolution couldn't take place up until recently with the invention of systems allowing the recording of music and the ability to make a fine-tuned match to a recording due to the noise in the system as you put it "maybe they were approximating" also makes a lot of sense.

[jancivil]

After reading some valuable answers and redefining my own way of thinking about the problem, now I think I have more questions than answers...

It's interesting to understand the process of hexachords in gregorian times. I'm left to wonder *WHY* they used do-re-mi-fa-sol-la. I mean why use a half-tone from the third-to-fourth? It just seems arbitrary as anything else.

Well, it can be said here are two consonances. As contrived, it seems made for convenience, 'six, half of twelve' but you got rid of the nasty devil problem of the tritone, which they would kill you for. It always struck me as strange the complicated nature of going to a new 'mi-fa' to get 7-8. I think 'the hand' influenced the practice perhaps immeasurably and I was prepared to argue for a more hexatonic bent in the music out of what I was shown way back in another life.

And again, does this description really represented the singing practice? Or were they influencing the singing pratice?
- how technology influenced the repertoire.

I mean, if you have a lira that plays a bunch of sounds your repertoire is influenced by the sounds it makes.

If you have a flute making a bunch of sounds your repertoire is influenced by the sounds it is able to make.

Were already conventions regarding that at some point? Or a shepherd in the VIth century carving a flute was just doing it randomly and playing around with whatever it came out from it?

Here is an interesting chicken or the egg question, isn't it. But for me Arabic music theory and instruments is instructive. I think the intervals in instrumental music convey an accent and a thing out of the voice that is ethnicity-based. You look at the Oud and its construction follows al-Farabi, basically. But this investigation of intervals was an expression of culture, when they had a really progressive culture (and there was a lot of cross-influence from the world as well as the identity). So they went much, much further with ratios and really delved into the ways of the 'comma', and interest in several sizes of 'minor second' etc. that came out of the old Greek experiments.