How/why did the major scale was born independently by different civilizations?

[felipescalador]

So my teacher ask me to research this. How/why did the major scale was born independently by different civilizations?

How is it possible different people long time ago arrived to the major scale independently?

[bronxsound]

That's what I was thinking about recently. Microtuning was the reason for that and I've end up with asking myself pretty the same question.

The most intriguing thing about it is that there's a serious math behind it and can't take "pleasingly sounding" factor as the definitive answer.

[tapper mike]

Wikipedia, Google, bing, public library. You'll have to provide references to your teachers. having a published printed document will go over much better then "Some guy at KVR told me this because I was too lazy to look it up."

[Jafo]

Blame Pythagoras...

To wit, it's because when you take each harmonic and scale it to the same octave, you get a pretty fair approximation of the (equal temperament) major scale: 1, 9/8, 6/5, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, 7/4 (or 15/8).

[Jafo]

Gah, KVR coding got me. That last should be "(or 15/8 )." [mod edit: Fixed.]

[wrench45us]

i woukld guess it has something to do with the overtone series
physics and math before it was 'reduced' to physics and math

[Ogg Vorbis]

I am no ethnomusicologist, but I don't think that the major scale IS a universal pitch order. It doesn't show up in Indian classical music, Chinese ancient or traditional music, Hopi, Cheynene, Haudenosaunee, Aboriginal Australian music, Javanese music, music of ancient Persia, Canadian Inuit music or even Andean pan flute music.

I've read theories of "proto scales" involving pentatonic stem scales, but even this is not widely accepted because it assumes that there is a "tonal evolution" towards western scales which is rather western-centric thinking.

Maybe someone could argue that by and large the octave is widely divided into 7 note scales which is related to the natural harmonic series, but you'd have to account for a lot of exceptions.

Is the premise of the assignment even valid?

[Jafo]

I am no ethnomusicologist, but I don't think that the major scale IS a universal pitch order. It doesn't show up in Indian classical music, Chinese ancient or traditional music, Hopi, Cheynene, Haudenosaunee, Aboriginal Australian music, Javanese music, music of ancient Persia, Canadian Inuit music or even Andean pan flute music.

I've read theories of "proto scales" involving pentatonic stem scales, but even this is not widely accepted because it assumes that there is a "tonal evolution" towards western scales which is rather western-centric thinking.

Maybe someone could argue that by and large the octave is widely divided into 7 note scales which is related to the natural harmonic series, but you'd have to account for a lot of exceptions.

Is the premise of the assignment even valid?

Good points, and you've pretty much settled this -- although I wish to save a tiny bit of face and point out that there are (a few) ragas which use the 7-tone major scale.

[xoxos]

i woukld guess it has something to do with the overtone series
physics and math before it was 'reduced' to physics and math

i concur transposition of the harmonic series into one octave, more or less.

i don't think it's universal either - personally i think there has been much more intercultural dialogue than historical accounts indicated (at elast when i was in school).

in a similar vein, consider the regular vowels, a, i, u, e, o. again, not universal, but pretty close to it considering the number of dialects they are present in. without thinking too deeply about it, i would expect a strong parallel to any linear resonator.

[Loki Fuego]

Major scale was predominantly used in Western civilization. Because of rather easy cross-culture communications on Eurasia and Africa continent major scale might also be found in non-Western civilization. However the further from Europe you go, the less used it was. For example, traditional Japanese music sounds quite strange for European ears.
So tell your teacher that he is asking incorrect question.

[felipescalador]

he told me nobody knows how different people arrive to that relationship of intervals we know as the major scale..

He suggest it could maybe aliens teach humas centuries ago.

I didnt expect such coocked answer

[felipescalador]

I am no ethnomusicologist, but I don't think that the major scale IS a universal pitch order. It doesn't show up in Indian classical music, Chinese ancient or traditional music, Hopi, Cheynene, Haudenosaunee, Aboriginal Australian music, Javanese music, music of ancient Persia, Canadian Inuit music or even Andean pan flute music.

I've read theories of "proto scales" involving pentatonic stem scales, but even this is not widely accepted because it assumes that there is a "tonal evolution" towards western scales which is rather western-centric thinking.

Maybe someone could argue that by and large the octave is widely divided into 7 note scales which is related to the natural harmonic series, but you'd have to account for a lot of exceptions.

Is the premise of the assignment even valid?

Good points, and you've pretty much settled this -- although I wish to save a tiny bit of face and point out that there are (a few) ragas which use the 7-tone major scale.

makes sense.

[Meffy]

Tell him aliens taught humanity to play that five-note theme from "Close Encounters," but humans had to go and complicate things. He can't disprove it, so it must be correct.

(Note: Do this only if you don't care whether he gives you a bad grade.)

[herodotus]

Ogg is right, the major scale is only universal because the popularity of Western music has made it so. The indigenous scales of many cultures may parallel it to a certain extent (e.g the Balinese Slendro scale can sound similar, depending on the ensemble), but they are by no means identical.


If any scale could possibly claim to be universal, it would be the pentatonic. But this, too, is subject to all kinds of local variants.

[Ogg Vorbis]

Here is a question I haven't thought of before... is 4/4 a universal metric pulse? Hmm...