Some_Guy

@Seery or, alternatively, chat me chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/96408/chat-with-seery

@Seery This is a different question and I don't want to fill up these comments. Please feel free to ask it and I will happily answer. But yes, I am sure that there is nothing special about 432 Hz, and I can address all the points you raised in this comment. Another point you raised in that same comment was re JI: "just practicality or laws of nature?". That is another interesting question, and there are actually fundamental natural reasons why we don't tune justly (outside of practicality) which I think you might find interesting. But alas, no space here. I would love to answer though!

@Seery A432 think is complete bunk based on misinformation (and also just logically, think about it, "hz" is an arbitrary unit based on the length of time the second, so the number 432 is meaningless and all that stuff about 432 as a magic number makes no sense. It's like talking about how many inches a guitar string should be, it's a different number if you measure in a different unit!) Not to mention, A is an arbitrary note to tune from (most music isn't in A), and that humans pitch perception is relative not absolute. I can't believe are still getting taken in by this!

The comment on the purpose and function of temperaments in your answer. Comment in the linguistic sense, not the digital sense; remark, observation, comment, response, utterance, point, "glob of words" if you like... I was talking about the answer you posted anyway ;)

@Seery your question doesn't follow on from Tim's comment at all.. They're different, but close. That's the point of a tempered tuning. If you don't understand why we use 12TET instead of just intonation which has more consonant intervals, I suggest you post a separate question on that topic

@ToddWilcox flutes actually make sense in terms of both the volume to project and the military history. Flutes (especially fifes and other small transverse flutes) have always been military instruments, specifically because they do project so well over long distances. And in modern marching bands, flutes in the upper registers easily cut through the whole band, piccolos even more so. Consider the fact that, in the modern orchestra, there are usually 2 flutes and 20-30 violins. Not saying 2 flutes is the same volume as 30 violins, but the fact that it's even possible tells you something.

difficult because the question is so broad, my comments might be too long for a comments section but I also don't think it's really comprehensive enough to "answer" your question, just an aspect of it.

@foreyez I didn't realise how much I'd have to say. Please feel free to rip off these comments and create an answer (anyone)

And if you're wondering "OK so why use scales at all", listen to this youtu.be/tCMhuN3053o and tell me whether you can sing even held whole notes that sound in tune with the chords just by ear. It's not easy to always find notes that fit when the harmony jumps around like that, and so employing scales can be a useful method to find the "good notes" in a given song; but they're just a tool, not a "rule". And personally, I prefer to only play songs I know well enough that I can just follow my ears, and if that means I don't play "giant steps" then personally I can live with that.

for an example of a song that includes lots of weird harmonic movements, and has a melody that dances around these weird movements, there is desafinado by Tom Jobim. It's literally called "out of tune" and is deliberately cleverly written to have a bizarre melody that only works because it implies an underlying (complex af) harmonic structure. On the opposite side "pyramid song" by radiohead works by essentially reusing the same notes in the melody again and again and re-contextualising them with new chords. Both approaches produce interesting effects and both can be (and are) used in a solo.

Also, you have to realise that most songs will have chords that relate in some way to the home key at most points, and so whether your melody is following "the chords" or "the key" is a matter of perspective. And when songs use chords that noticeably fall outside the key, well you might write a melody to highlight those odd chords, or you might conversely do the exact opposite, sing or play a note from the home key to highlight the contrast, and then give a feeling of resolution when the chord gets back home. These are all options!

There are no "rules" here, it depends on the effect you want. But yes, often melodies (whether planned or improvised) will outline the chords of a song, and pick out notes that highlight the harmonic movement. But again, not always by any means.

@foreyez I'm saying that melody exists in a harmonic context, and that in most western music, that harmonic context includes both the pitch centre in general and also the harmony at that present time in the song. Part of what goes into a melody is choosing notes that outline that harmonic context, both of the home key, and the current harmony. So a melody might include notes that imply the chords, or it might deliberately choose notes that clash with or embellish the chords, but all of those notes will be heard in relation to both the chords and the key.

take "misty" for example, look at the melody and you'll see it follows the changes more than the "home key"

melody follows the changes as much as it follows the chords. If you improvise around the melody you'll be using a mix of the key and the changes... and passing notes and everything else

@jjmusicnotes I don't think so, while there are an unusually high number of comments, they're all all specifically about answering the original question itself (rather than a conversation wandering off in another direction), and so are better left here in my opinion.

That's not to denigrate classical musicians, it's just a completely different concept of rhythm; on the flip side most jazz players can't convincingly play with classical rhythmic devices based on the ebbing and flowing pulse of much of western art music. As a final point, the idea that you can accurately notate modern jazz/pop drumming using standard notation comes from a lack of understanding of that drumming itself; it's microscopic variations of timing and dynamics that make the groove, and all of that is lost on the page!

@topomorto I hadn't read this answer when I started to write mine. I couldn't agree more. Your two points, that classically trained musicians have incredible difficulty in playing a "groove" together and that standard musical notation is wholly inadequate at notating many modern rhythms are both a consequence of the fact that those rhythms were not present as the notation and pedagogy of classical music evolved. (The size of the hall is not the problem, classical musicians play rhythm very differently to say a jazz band, I've seen samba schools play in large echoey spaces)

If customers are using too much data (regardless of the origin of that data), then ISPs are free to put data caps on their plans, or increase the charge for that data, to either reduce demand or invest raise capital to upgrade infrastructure.

often classical theorists steeped in common practice music misinterpret the natural mixed-modality of pop music as a reflection of transient modulations or borrowings, but in a sense they are no more modulations than an E7 in the key of A minor is a modulation to A major

as, while the second way is in a sense more accurate, people tend to "read into" key signatures as a reflection of the key centre of the piece, and so notating them as though they are in a simple major or minor key and adding accidentals (for the sixth and seventh degree respectively) is the more transparent way to write it

in those cases, it may be more prudent to notate them as G minor and G major, with 2 flats and 1 sharp respectively, rather than notating them with 1 flat and no sharps/flats

for example, imagine 2 songs in the key of G, one pop song that is fundamentally dorian in it's nature, with relatively few borrowings or modal mixture, and another than is fundamentally mixolydian, in the sense that there is not a B flat nor an F sharp to be found

In those instances, it's often prudent to notate the music with a key signature that reflects the tonal centre, even in cases where a modal designation would be more appropriate

While that's true, I'm talking about non-modulating music that nevertheless doesn't fit the classical major/minor paradigm

@ArmadilloBill I missed this message, I think I've worked out how to ping people now, let's see if this has worked!

@Tim 4 indeed! woops!

@Tim I think I have to write @TIM to ping you here, so here we are

although as "some guy" I suppose I can't exactly criticise for that now can I?

I just think it's a great thing that there are people out there willing to put their time and effort into freely sharing their knowledge, I'm often left thinking "who ARE these people" haha

One of the things I've always lamented is the lack of a PM system here, there have been so many times when I've really felt like just dropping someone a message either to say thanks, or because there are some really interesting musical minds around here!

I don't really tend to follow the behind the scenes stuff at this site to be honest. Who've we lost?

I spent more time on it that I should have, probably, but I really ended up going "down the rabbit hole" so to speak.

Also, I'm eager to here your thoughts on the answer I posted about bVII chords when you have some time!!! :)

Just as an aside by the way, I really respect your contributions to this site so I really hope I haven't pissed you off here!

And yet it's still perfectly adequate to write these sentences to you despite its anachronistic aspects and often plain senselessness

so you may as well just stick to the established convention and write with the established system of key signatures, even if that is derived from a system which no longer applies. After all, the English language's orthography is full of silent letters and inconsistent vowel transcriptions: many with an etymological reason behind them but many because of what the grammarians thought was the "correct" derivation of the word despite it actually not having any linguistic merit.

So the same thing goes if I write the music down for any piece of music. What is the tonic, and what is the tonic chord's tonality. Write using that key signature. That's generally the convention followed if you want to write down a transcription of the blues, because what other option do you have? It's not like writing in mixolydian would really "solve" the problem of the music having a different tonal system than common practice music

when a more "faithful" representation of the modal nature of a song would have a single G sharp in the key signature (notice that this would produce a key signature with both a B flat AND a C sharp, and no F sharp in the piece was tranposed to A, MAD)

like if I was to transcribe this: open.spotify.com/track/1ymePDL4ftRHT2JnAZ54ku then I'd use a key signature with 3 sharps, because people looking at that will go "Ok, it's in E major"

it gets even weirder when notating music that is strongly modal, (without much interchange) but uses a scale based around a different set of notes

Personally, if I'm writing a transcription of a piece of music that used the flat 7 far more than the major 7th, I'm going to use the major key signature: because that's the convention we have: there isn't really a more convenient way of writing a pitch centre

Most mainstream music isn't written down at the time of composition to be fair. Folk traditions are generally aural traditions too. But the fact is that the conventions of the only reasonable orthographic system we have are fundamentally derived from common practice music

neverthe less the point about key signatures is an interesting one

I don't want to seem nit picky but you've raised an interesting point in the last comment, so take this as a discussion rather than a criticism. I feel I was overly harsh with my initial comment, based on a misreading of what you were getting at

I might have been a bit overenthusiastic with my criticism. I took your comment to mean that the majority of music uses only the diatonic notes, rather than that the majority of music uses mainly the diatonic notes. I'd like to address your other points but perhaps that'd be better in chat?

the question is locked unfortunately! And sorry if I seemed overly critical

1) that only using notes from the diatonic scale reflects the majority of pieces (however you want to characterise it geographically or time-wise: it's not even true for say the majority of western music from the last 100 years) 2) that any use of notes or chords outside of the major scale necessarily represents "borrowing" from another key or scale. I'm not saying learning about basic diatonic harmony isn't valuable: after all, you have to start somewhere. But the idea that this represents the "normal" rules which are "occasionally broken" is worse than useless to understand most music.

I picked rock music as an example not because it's a notable special case, but because 1) it's familiar to most of us 2) it's isn't usually thought of as high-brow/deviant/complex music 3) I'm currently writing an answer to a question of yours about chord function in rock music, so it's on my mind. My issue is with a sentence like ; "The majority of pieces will be in 'a key', and thus use the diatonic notes from that related scale to sound that way, but sometimes a twist in the journey will necessitate other notes (which by definition are from other keys/scales)", for 2 reasons (cont.)