Do you know music theory?. Do you care?.

michael_m

@purpan2 said:

@u0421793 said:

@tahiche said:

@u0421793 said:
This is an interesting thread on some other site, has some answers to questions I had decades ago
(by which I mean I spent most of the 80s and 90s complaining to everyone that the keyboard should be renamed, the note we call C should be renamed to A, then go upwards and include the black notes so that the octave previously known as C instead goes A B C D E F G H I J K L – except nobody did anything about it)

In Spain we do the “do re mi fa sol la si” naming so I’m always doing some sort of automatic translation, I see a “G” and turn it to “sol”. I also have to translate any interval stuff, which is usually explained on a piano, into guitar frets. Lost in translation.

Is Do a specific note, then? I thought it was the first note of a scale no matter where you start it

It can be, but then again, it mightn’t be.

It come from solfège, and is designed to teach recognition of intervals rather than fixed pitch.

Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr

@michael_m said:

@purpan2 said:

@u0421793 said:

@tahiche said:

@u0421793 said:
This is an interesting thread on some other site, has some answers to questions I had decades ago
(by which I mean I spent most of the 80s and 90s complaining to everyone that the keyboard should be renamed, the note we call C should be renamed to A, then go upwards and include the black notes so that the octave previously known as C instead goes A B C D E F G H I J K L – except nobody did anything about it)

In Spain we do the “do re mi fa sol la si” naming so I’m always doing some sort of automatic translation, I see a “G” and turn it to “sol”. I also have to translate any interval stuff, which is usually explained on a piano, into guitar frets. Lost in translation.

Is Do a specific note, then? I thought it was the first note of a scale no matter where you start it

It can be, but then again, it mightn’t be.

It come from solfège, and is designed to teach recognition of intervals rather than fixed pitch.

Arabic and Indian music also name the notes in a manner similar to solfège. I used to visualize intervals along a string instead of a keyboard. After studying singing for a few years I now just visualize them in solfège. It’s a good system.

espiegel123

@u0421793 said:

@tahiche said:

@u0421793 said:
This is an interesting thread on some other site, has some answers to questions I had decades ago
(by which I mean I spent most of the 80s and 90s complaining to everyone that the keyboard should be renamed, the note we call C should be renamed to A, then go upwards and include the black notes so that the octave previously known as C instead goes A B C D E F G H I J K L – except nobody did anything about it)

In Spain we do the “do re mi fa sol la si” naming so I’m always doing some sort of automatic translation, I see a “G” and turn it to “sol”. I also have to translate any interval stuff, which is usually explained on a piano, into guitar frets. Lost in translation.

Is Do a specific note, then? I thought it was the first note of a scale no matter where you start it

It depends on where one lives. In the U.S., for instance Do, just means the scale root.

When I lived in France in the early 80’s, solfège note names (do, re , mi, etc) could either be relative (Do is the root of whatever key you are in) or absolute depending on the context. For example, classical sheet music would label a piece in E minor as Mi Mineur.

tahiche

@espiegel123 said:

@u0421793 said:

@tahiche said:

@u0421793 said:
This is an interesting thread on some other site, has some answers to questions I had decades ago
(by which I mean I spent most of the 80s and 90s complaining to everyone that the keyboard should be renamed, the note we call C should be renamed to A, then go upwards and include the black notes so that the octave previously known as C instead goes A B C D E F G H I J K L – except nobody did anything about it)

In Spain we do the “do re mi fa sol la si” naming so I’m always doing some sort of automatic translation, I see a “G” and turn it to “sol”. I also have to translate any interval stuff, which is usually explained on a piano, into guitar frets. Lost in translation.

Is Do a specific note, then? I thought it was the first note of a scale no matter where you start it

It depends on where one lives. In the U.S., for instance Do, just means the scale root.

When I lived in France in the early 80’s, solfège note names (do, re , mi, etc) could either be relative (Do is the root of whatever key you are in) or absolute depending on the context. For example, classical sheet music would label a piece in E minor as Mi Mineur.

i just looked it up on Wikipedia…

“ C or Do is the first note and semitone of the C major scale, the third note of the A minor scale (the relative minor of C major), and the fourth note (G, A, B, C) of the Guidonian hand, commonly pitched around 261.63 Hz. The actual frequency has depended on historical pitch standards, and for transposing instruments a distinction is made between written and sounding or concert pitch. It has enharmonic equivalents of B♯ and Ddouble flat. In English the term Do is used interchangeably with C only by adherents of fixed Do solfège; in the movable Do system Do refers to the tonic of the prevailing key.”

If you’re not reading music and for regular use, 99% of the times do=C, re=D, mi=E and so on.
In this matter you guys are lucky, at least the letter naming points out that one note is higher than the other and is more representative of the intervals. But of course they had to make it complicated and start in C instead of A.
Treating music as a language, which I think is appropriate. Learning music with the standard, common method would be like learning English with a Shakespeare book. You can, but it’s harder and more inefficient. It’s not about music theory, it’s about the set of inflexible conventions and teaching methods. I don’t have an issue with music theory but I do want to point out how it’s IMO inefficient and obtuse.

It’d be a lot easier to visualize if music was explained with numbers, which is a lot closer to the isomorphic keyboards.
Talking about numbers… Music is indeed maths. Imagine if when you were taught maths and numbers, everything was based on even numbers. 0,2,4,6… and odd numbers would be “2 sharp” for 3 or “6b” for 5. That’s what’s happening with the C major scale and white/black keys…. It’s opinionated and really hard to follow.

purpan2

@tahiche said:

@espiegel123 said:

@u0421793 said:

@tahiche said:

@u0421793 said:
This is an interesting thread on some other site, has some answers to questions I had decades ago
(by which I mean I spent most of the 80s and 90s complaining to everyone that the keyboard should be renamed, the note we call C should be renamed to A, then go upwards and include the black notes so that the octave previously known as C instead goes A B C D E F G H I J K L – except nobody did anything about it)

In Spain we do the “do re mi fa sol la si” naming so I’m always doing some sort of automatic translation, I see a “G” and turn it to “sol”. I also have to translate any interval stuff, which is usually explained on a piano, into guitar frets. Lost in translation.

Is Do a specific note, then? I thought it was the first note of a scale no matter where you start it

It depends on where one lives. In the U.S., for instance Do, just means the scale root.

When I lived in France in the early 80’s, solfège note names (do, re , mi, etc) could either be relative (Do is the root of whatever key you are in) or absolute depending on the context. For example, classical sheet music would label a piece in E minor as Mi Mineur.

i just looked it up on Wikipedia…

“ C or Do is the first note and semitone of the C major scale, the third note of the A minor scale (the relative minor of C major), and the fourth note (G, A, B, C) of the Guidonian hand, commonly pitched around 261.63 Hz. The actual frequency has depended on historical pitch standards, and for transposing instruments a distinction is made between written and sounding or concert pitch. It has enharmonic equivalents of B♯ and Ddouble flat. In English the term Do is used interchangeably with C only by adherents of fixed Do solfège; in the movable Do system Do refers to the tonic of the prevailing key.”

If you’re not reading music and for regular use, 99% of the times do=C, re=D, mi=E and so on.
In this matter you guys are lucky, at least the letter naming points out that one note is higher than the other and is more representative of the intervals. But of course they had to make it complicated and start in C instead of A.
Treating music as a language, which I think is appropriate. Learning music with the standard, common method would be like learning English with a Shakespeare book. You can, but it’s harder and more inefficient. It’s not about music theory, it’s about the set of inflexible conventions and teaching methods. I don’t have an issue with music theory but I do want to point out how it’s IMO inefficient and obtuse.

It’d be a lot easier to visualize if music was explained with numbers, which is a lot closer to the isomorphic keyboards.
Talking about numbers… Music is indeed maths. Imagine if when you were taught maths and numbers, everything was based on even numbers. 0,2,4,6… and odd numbers would be “2 sharp” for 3 or “6b” for 5. That’s what’s happening with the C major scale and white/black keys…. It’s opinionated and really hard to follow.

It is, however, important in music that terminology is more flexible than a numerical list. The same note can be, for example, A sharp or B flat, depending on context. That wouldn’t work with a list of numbers.

ervin

Woohoo, I come from the country that gave the world the Kodály method (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodály_method). Based on the do-re-mi system and hand signs, we learned and used it as kids to help with intonation, hearing skills, general singing and even sight-reading.

I'm not saying it helps much with atonal music or Igor-apps 😁, but it's definitely one of the reasons Hungarian choirs used to win so many contests.

espiegel123

@tahiche said:

….

Treating music as a language, which I think is appropriate. Learning music with the standard, common method would be like learning English with a Shakespeare book. You can, but it’s harder and more inefficient. It’s not about music theory, it’s about the set of inflexible conventions and teaching methods. I don’t have an issue with music theory but I do want to point out how it’s IMO inefficient and obtuse.

It’d be a lot easier to visualize if music was explained with numbers, which is a lot closer to the isomorphic keyboards.
Talking about numbers… Music is indeed maths. Imagine if when you were taught maths and numbers, everything was based on even numbers. 0,2,4,6… and odd numbers would be “2 sharp” for 3 or “6b” for 5. That’s what’s happening with the C major scale and white/black keys…. It’s opinionated and really hard to follow.

In my opinion, you are making things harder for yourself by putting so much of your attention on how if violates your sense of logic an consistency. Let that go. It is getting in your way.

If you stick with it, it will make sense to you and you will find some interesting patterns and synergies that aren’t obvious to you now.

It’s a flexible and powerful system.

TheOriginalPaulB

It doesn’t help the orthogonal logic lovers that the scale of C major has no sharps or flats, but some of the notes are only a semitone apart…

u0421793

Luckily I’ve had a guitar since I was a teenager in Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬 – about a decade later I learned a few chords

I still can’t remember the names of the strings nor what the notes are on the various frets, but that’s just because I’ve only had it since the 70s, give me a chance, it’s not the sort of thing that should be hurried

I think I need to practice on the guitar a bit more, to be honest, and try and find a way to remember some of it

Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr

@tahiche said:

It’d be a lot easier to visualize if music was explained with numbers, which is a lot closer to the isomorphic keyboards.
Talking about numbers… Music is indeed maths. Imagine if when you were taught maths and numbers, everything was based on even numbers. 0,2,4,6… and odd numbers would be “2 sharp” for 3 or “6b” for 5. That’s what’s happening with the C major scale and white/black keys…. It’s opinionated and really hard to follow.

Easier to visualize, perhaps. But solfege and similar systems are designed to support singing. The note names cannot have more than one syllable, or end on a consonant. Numbers would not work for this reason.

TheOriginalPaulB

@u0421793 said:
Luckily I’ve had a guitar since I was a teenager in Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬 – about a decade later I learned a few chords

I still can’t remember the names of the strings nor what the notes are on the various frets, but that’s just because I’ve only had it since the 70s, give me a chance, it’s not the sort of thing that should be hurried

I’m pretty sure one of the strings is called Desmond, but I’m not sure which one…