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The musical world has already tried out relative scales. It was in fact the first thing tried in notation. Look at the notation device used for Gregorian Chants
by ludston 14y ago
The musical world has already tried out relative scales. It was in fact the first thing tried in notation. Look at the notation device used for Gregorian Chants to see it yourself.
We already use relative notation for most instruments. Trumpets, Clarinets and Tenor Saxophones typically read notation where Bb is equivalent to C on the page. What you'll note we Don't do, is change our relative pitch between songs.
No. Relative pitch is Very Hard, because as a musician, my hands don't play relatively. When I see an Eb on a notation sheet, my body knows how to play the note without me thinking about it, and it has to, because sometimes you can have notes flying at you with a rate of 32 a bar. This does not leave time to translate between the relative abstraction on paper and the absolute pitch of my instrument. It's not just harder.
It's much, much harder to train your brain and body to be able to map the same object on the page to twelve different body positions, depending on some variable that changes at random between songs.
Also remember, that different pitches have different textures, otherwise we'd never play in a keys other than C.
- cliffbean 14y agoAbsolute pitches and are the concern of the performer, but relative pitches are the concern of the listener. Who's more important? ;-) This is why I mainly worry that a relative-pitch notation may present a steeper learning curve. Advanced players typically need to be able to think at least somewhat in both relative pitches and absolute pitches at the same time anyway. Absolute pitches because that's what many instruments demand, and relative pitches, because that's where a lot of the meaning is, which informs other aspects of the performance. But it typically takes more practice to learn to think in both ways at once. > Also remember, that different pitches have different textures, otherwise we'd never play in a keys other than C. I did propose that pieces could indicate their intended key.
- ludston 14y agoAbsolute pitches are the concern of the performer. Correct. Also consider that the performer is the one who is looking at the sheet music, and not the listener.