A |
A# |
B |
C |
C# |
D |
D# |
E |
F |
F# |
G |
G# |
MUSIC |
Pic by Bing AI (!) My prompt...
(For best results, please view page in landscape).
QUICK AND EASY VERSION.
Please note; none of the following, would change so much as one note of any music ever written.
It is simply about how we count the theory behind the music...
INTRO.
When I was a child learning to play music, and attempting to learn the theory that went with it - I could sense that something was a little off! Many of us who have tried music, can sense a wonderful, magical, mathematical system is behind it all, yet at the same time, the theory of it seems difficult and nonsensical! So what's going on? Well, even though music theory, in some ways is a vast and complex subject, bear with me, and I believe we can make it all a lot easier to understand :-)
What is the magic key to making such complexity simple? 12 base counting is the answer my friend! If you want to understand the following, it is essential you have a basic understanding of 12 base – if not, please go back and look at the previous page... In the second half of the page, we can look at some physics and history, but for now, Lets keep things simple, and jump on in!
THE BASICS.
In music, one of the most important concepts, is the “OCTAVE”. This word comes from the ancient Greek and Latin word for 8 – Octo. For now, lets just say that the octave point, is where the scale starts again – “1 octave higher”, and repeats the same notes in a higher pitch. For example, on a piano, we can talk about, low “C” middle “C” and high “C”.
In the second half of this page, I will go into more technical detail about this...
Now, here's the problem – there are actually 12 notes in an octave! How did this occur? Well there are 8 notes that fit together extremely well, they are called the “MAJOR” scale.
You probably already know them as; DO RE MI FA SO LA TI DO. If you start at a “C” note on a piano, and play 8 white notes in a row, (to the right) this is what you will play.
(Note, people of my generation, typically learned about this via the film “The sound of music” and the song; “Do Re Mi”).
The notes will be; C D E F G A B C When you get to the high C, you have just played 1 octave – and this is where the name comes from. The problem is – we just skipped all the
black notes! The black note between C and D , could be called either C# (sharp) or Db (flat). To keep things simple, lets just use #sharps for now.
IF you played all the notes in the octave (black AND white) you would play; C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C. Technically, this called the CHROMATIC scale.
So, the major scale actually only plays 7 notes – and repeats at the 8th. The chromatic scale, plays 12 notes and repeats at the 13th.
Incidentally, on a guitar, 1 (lower) octave starts on a 0 or open string, and thehigher octave or start again point occurs at the 12th fret :-)
So, if you think about it, “octave” is a “misnomer” or incorrect name! It should really be called something like a 12tave or doztave!
THE PROBLEM
So, The musical system that we count it in sets of 8, is actually 12 based -and we it count in 10 base? Really? Yes!
No wonder there is such a muddle!
Is there anything we could do about this? Yes - use Duodecimal – it’s the missing link!
Remember on the previous previous (numbers) page, I made the point that counting starts at 0 not 1?!
If we apply Duodecimal – starting at 0, and use it with the Chromatic scale – suddenly all the problems of music theory start to...disappear!
In the pic above, I showed the traditional way of counting the notes on the piano/major scale. To recap;
TRADITIONAL
C D E F G A B C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
THE SOLUTION.
This way, exactly follows what the musical scale actually does! Note how we start and end on “C”, and also start and end using a “0”- just like decimal counting?! All makes a bit more sense now hey?! So the missing link,
How did we end up with such a Music Theory Muddle? Well, music theory as we now know it, took literally thousands of years to develop. Many different people where involved, from many different countries. Different ideas came in and out of fashion. The idea of using an 8 based system for music happened to stick, and of humanity chose to use decimal – therein lies the problem! So we’ve have centuries of thinking we had the correct way – but as shown above – there is actually a fairly simple fix!
Here’s another point; the same as traditional theory (moveable DO), you can start at any letter/key you want – for example A – because its the first letter of the Alphabet. If you wanted to – you could represent 1 octave in a cycle, and it would look like this;
CYCLE PIC.
PLEASE FEEL FREE CHECK OUT MY YOUTUBE VID ON THIS SUBJECT HERE;
MY VIDEO ABOUT MUSIC IN 12 BASE
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A LITTLE HISTORY.
There is evidence of the existence of Bone flutes, from as long ago as 38,000 BC! Humanity has been enjoying music for a very long time!
MUSIC HISTORY
However, lets jump forward thousands of years, to where modern -ish music theory first started... There is some disagreement about the first people to “discover” music theory, but I'm going to go with one of the most popular versions – which also happens to be my favourite!
Lets look at Pythagoras of Samos c. 570 BC – c. 495 BC- yes he’s the Greek philosopher who is also famous for his triangle theorem! Unfortunately, not much was written by Pythagoras himself, so it is difficult to know what is fact and what is fiction. Pythagoras, noticed some very interesting things about string lengths. (Some say after hearing the notes produced by a blacksmiths hammers-but this is unsure...)
PYTHAGORAS
ORIGIN OF 12 TONE SCALE.
He found that if any string is twice the length of another, it sounds “the same” but an octave lower. He also noticed if that string is half the length of the first string, it sounds “the same” but an octave higher!
He then went a step further... He noticed a very pleasing-harmonious sound if 1 string was say 2 feet long and another was 3 feet long. This is called a 2:3 ratio in music theory.
PYTHAGOREAN COMMA
ORIGIN OF 8 TONE SCALE.
For the origins of the 8 tone scale, we will need to jump forwards a few centuries.
An Italian monk, named Guido of Arezzo c.993 – c. 1033 is credited with the invention (or at least development of) modern musical staff notation. He is also credited with the first use of solfege. Nowadays, we know this as the Do re mi system. Originally, there were only 6 notes in the system. However in the 16th century, Giovanni Battista Doni, made a few changes – and it became what we know today. If you are interested, here is some more info;
OTHER FACTORS.
I suspect there are a couple of other reasons that we ended up with an 8 note system. Since ancient Greek times, there were 7 visible moving bodies in the sky. Sun, moon, and 5 visible planets. After Roman and Norse influence etc, these eventually influenced the names of the days of the week. You can still see the influence of Sun in Sunday, and Moon in Monday. But the point is, we humans had developed a liking for order and the number 7!
As well as that, there were ideas like “The music of the spheres”, since ancient Greek times. This idea involved a link between planetary motion in our solar system, and the notes of music. In the 16th century, Keppler refined these ideas...
Lets finish this page, with a little look at the physics of what is actually happening in music.