5 ms·

For non-musicians, here's some terminology behind this: There are 7 natural notes in (western) music: A, B, C, D, E, F, G (the white keys on a piano keyboard)

by snorkel 12y ago

For non-musicians, here's some terminology behind this: There are 7 natural notes in (western) music: A, B, C, D, E, F, G (the white keys on a piano keyboard) ... plus 5 accidental notes that half-way between: A#, C#, D#, F#, G# also known as Bb, Db, Eb, Gb, Ab ... the black keys on a piano keyboard. # means sharp (go up in pitch one-half step) b means flat (go down in pitch one-half step) 7 naturals + 5 accidentals = 12 notes in the chromatic scale. These are the primary colors in music. Chords are like secondary colors. Chords are combinations notes that harmonize well when played together. Typically chords are 3 or more notes spaced at one note or one-and-half notes apart. So the C Major chord is C + E + G played together. Minor chords, noted with the lowercase "m" are made by dropping the "third" note down a half-step, so "C minor" or "Cm" is C + Eb + G, can also be expressed as C + D# + G So put it all together, F#m means "F sharp minor" so the root note of the chord is "F sharp" and the next note from the F major chord, A#, is dropped down a half step from its major position to A natural, so the notes are F# + A + C# Fortunately when playing an actual instrument you only memorize your finger positions to make the entire common chord shapes rather than thinking about the individual note under each finger. The hook melody of song, the chord sequence that is repeated throughout the verse or chorus, is expressed as chord progression in Roman numeral 1 to 7: I II III IV V VI VII Why did we switch from letters to numerals now? Because lettered notes A, B, C, D, E, F, G are fixed positions (ie. hard-coded) and the numerals are relative positions (ie. abstracted) So the Roman numeral expression is a more general form of the melody structure. This lets you takes a progression like C–G–Am–F (repeated over and over until you get a Grammy) and expressed it as I–V–vi–IV .. which you can just shift up or down to another key and everybody loves your new hit song, you win another Grammy, and few people realize it's same damn song as before with new tempo and new lyrics! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%93IV_progression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%93... ...

codeulike 12y ago
But the question is, what's natural about the Naturals, and whats accidental about the Accidentals? Because taken together they are just 12 equally spaced notes.
- yodsanklai 12y ago
  Good question. I don't know the exact answer, but yes I think there's nothing special that distinguish naturals and accidentals from a "listening" point of view. However, this distinction is handy for written music. For example, when you play a piece of music in a given key, let say G major, the notes are G A B C D E F#, there's only one accidental, so you can put this information in the key signature at the beginning of the score, and you can use only 7 natural notes on your staff. And this works for all "diatonic" keys (where notes belong to a major scale). You can always write your music with 7 naturals.
  - codeulike 12y ago
    But you're just describing a notation, and the notation works OK because of the convention that in any given key you only use 7 of the available 12 tones. But why 7, and why those 7?
    - elihu 12y ago
      Sounds that sound good together have frequencies that are whole number ratios of each other. (This means they have harmonics that align. If they don't align, you get a beat frequency which sounds objectionable.) A 3:4:5 ratio is a major triad. A good scale should have as many major triads as possible with the least number of notes. So, let's call the root of our scale 1/1. You might want to build a major triad there, so you have 1/1, 5/4, and 3/2. If you build a triad off of 3/2, you'll end up adding a couple more notes: 15/8 and 9/4. If you add 4/3 as a note and build a triad there, you'll end up adding 5/3 and 2/1. 2/1 is the octave, so we can pretend it's equivalent to 1/1, and 9/4 is an octave above 9/8, so we can substitute 9/8. So, our scale is 1/1, 9/8, 5/4, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, and 15/8, and we have the major scale. It is possible to construct 3 major chords and 2 minor chords (10:12:15 ratio) from those seven notes. If you add 10/9 (slightly flat of 9/8), you can add one more minor chord. By a mathematical coincidence, we can approximate these values pretty closely with various powers of the twelfth root of 2: x = 2^(1/12) 1, x^2, x^4, x^5, x^7, x^9, x^11 The latter scale is equal tempered, whereas the former is "just" (untempered). The ET scale has very accurate fourths and fifths, but thirds and sixths are far enough off that they don't sound quite as nice in chords. We tend to put up with that in modern music, though.
nutmeg 12y ago
For some reason this is the first explanation of Roman numerals used in chord progression that made sense to me. Thank you!

by snorkel 12y ago

codeulike 12y ago

But the question is, what's natural about the Naturals, and whats accidental about the Accidentals? Because taken together they are just 12 equally spaced notes.

yodsanklai 12y ago
Good question. I don't know the exact answer, but yes I think there's nothing special that distinguish naturals and accidentals from a "listening" point of view. However, this distinction is handy for written music. For example, when you play a piece of music in a given key, let say G major, the notes are G A B C D E F#, there's only one accidental, so you can put this information in the key signature at the beginning of the score, and you can use only 7 natural notes on your staff. And this works for all "diatonic" keys (where notes belong to a major scale). You can always write your music with 7 naturals.
- codeulike 12y ago
  But you're just describing a notation, and the notation works OK because of the convention that in any given key you only use 7 of the available 12 tones. But why 7, and why those 7?
  - elihu 12y ago
    Sounds that sound good together have frequencies that are whole number ratios of each other. (This means they have harmonics that align. If they don't align, you get a beat frequency which sounds objectionable.) A 3:4:5 ratio is a major triad. A good scale should have as many major triads as possible with the least number of notes. So, let's call the root of our scale 1/1. You might want to build a major triad there, so you have 1/1, 5/4, and 3/2. If you build a triad off of 3/2, you'll end up adding a couple more notes: 15/8 and 9/4. If you add 4/3 as a note and build a triad there, you'll end up adding 5/3 and 2/1. 2/1 is the octave, so we can pretend it's equivalent to 1/1, and 9/4 is an octave above 9/8, so we can substitute 9/8. So, our scale is 1/1, 9/8, 5/4, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, and 15/8, and we have the major scale. It is possible to construct 3 major chords and 2 minor chords (10:12:15 ratio) from those seven notes. If you add 10/9 (slightly flat of 9/8), you can add one more minor chord. By a mathematical coincidence, we can approximate these values pretty closely with various powers of the twelfth root of 2: x = 2^(1/12) 1, x^2, x^4, x^5, x^7, x^9, x^11 The latter scale is equal tempered, whereas the former is "just" (untempered). The ET scale has very accurate fourths and fifths, but thirds and sixths are far enough off that they don't sound quite as nice in chords. We tend to put up with that in modern music, though.

nutmeg 12y ago

For some reason this is the first explanation of Roman numerals used in chord progression that made sense to me. Thank you!