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Why does sharp or flat want to step up or down? I took a few years of music lessons (granted light on theory) but I never heard this idea. Is this exclusive t

by ses1984 7y ago

Why does sharp or flat want to step up or down? I took a few years of music lessons (granted light on theory) but I never heard this idea. Is this exclusive to notes that are not in the current key? For example the f# in Gmaj doesn't want to step up to G any more than B wants to step up to C in Cmaj.

zozbot234 7y ago
Because historically, a "sharp" note was thought of as a leading tone (Ti), whereas a "flat" note was thought as a fourth scale degree (Fa), tending to step down to the third (Mi). (Actually, this was thought of most often in terms of hexachords, where there is no Ti and one would always use Mi-Fa for a half-step interval. I rewrote it in terms of scale degrees to avoid confusion.) I.e. the F# in Gmaj does "want" to step up to G, in basic structural terms. We call the places where this happens most properly "cadences", and they are among the main structuring elements in a piece of music. (This Ti-Do - F#-to-G or B-to-C motion is then called a "cantizans", since it appears most prominently as a "canto" or "sopran" cadence. It's most typically seen as Do-Ti-Do, where the first appearance of Do is first "prepared" in a context that makes it a consonance, but then sounds as a dissonance as the other parts shift to a dominant chord (Sol and Re), so it's allowed to resolve to the leading tone.)
Sharlin 7y ago
But B does want to step up (or resolve) to C, the tonic of the C major scale. Similarly with F# to G in G major.
- ses1984 7y ago
  So is it because it's sharp or flat or is it because of its position relative to the tonic?
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    Yes. (The local tonic, at least. It's no coincidence that the structural feature which most often results in "extra" sharps and flats, outside the key signature, is known as "tonicization".)
abannin 7y ago
You've never heard of this because it's not true. A note wants to resolve up or down based on it's relative distance from tonic. This had nothing to do with what it's named, the most important part of naming notes is not repeating letters in an 8-note scale.

zozbot234 7y ago

Because historically, a "sharp" note was thought of as a leading tone (Ti), whereas a "flat" note was thought as a fourth scale degree (Fa), tending to step down to the third (Mi). (Actually, this was thought of most often in terms of hexachords, where there is no Ti and one would always use Mi-Fa for a half-step interval. I rewrote it in terms of scale degrees to avoid confusion.) I.e. the F# in Gmaj does "want" to step up to G, in basic structural terms. We call the places where this happens most properly "cadences", and they are among the main structuring elements in a piece of music. (This Ti-Do - F#-to-G or B-to-C motion is then called a "cantizans", since it appears most prominently as a "canto" or "sopran" cadence. It's most typically seen as Do-Ti-Do, where the first appearance of Do is first "prepared" in a context that makes it a consonance, but then sounds as a dissonance as the other parts shift to a dominant chord (Sol and Re), so it's allowed to resolve to the leading tone.)

Sharlin 7y ago

But B does want to step up (or resolve) to C, the tonic of the C major scale. Similarly with F# to G in G major.

ses1984 7y ago
So is it because it's sharp or flat or is it because of its position relative to the tonic?
- zozbot234 7y ago
  Yes. (The local tonic, at least. It's no coincidence that the structural feature which most often results in "extra" sharps and flats, outside the key signature, is known as "tonicization".)

abannin 7y ago

You've never heard of this because it's not true. A note wants to resolve up or down based on it's relative distance from tonic. This had nothing to do with what it's named, the most important part of naming notes is not repeating letters in an 8-note scale.