I like a’s.
Unless I’m misunderstanding you, I’m hedging with my original parenthetical comment (that most of the modes originated with the Greeks) because there are some modern modes like dominant lydian, locrian #2, altered moded (aka super locrian).
Well, yes and no. In the 20th century, since the advent and acceptance of equal temperament, they are enharmonic, i.e. the same pitch represented by two different notes. Obviously, on a piano there’s only one key for each pair of enharmonics, and with fretted instruments it’s the same, but with many other instruments (like violin or trombone), you can hit any note slightly sharp or flat at will.
Secondly, from a harmonic point of view, E# and F are noted as such because of their harmonic function. For example, an augmented A chord would be written A, C#, E#, even though it can just as well be written A, C#, F because the fifth (E) is raised on half step. That, and because you already have an F# in the scale, and it would be a pain to alternate between natural and raised Fs in a piece. This harmonic consideration is also why you find double flats and double sharps in music.
Ooh, this time I have a question. I have an interval, say a third. C to E in the key of C. If I sharp the E I have an augmented third. If i double sharp it I have a doubly augmented third. Now say I flat the C. Can I do that? If I can, what do you call that?
A big fat mess. 
You could construct such a thing in theory, but it’s likely that the musician trying to read it would strangle you with a Pythagorean comma. You could probably call it a triple-augmented third, but since it’s enharmonically equivalent to a perfect fifth, there’s got to be an easier way to transcribe it.
I need translation help! I know the notes as do re mi fa sol la si. What are the letter equivalencies? Thank you
You can make do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do stand for any key you want. It’s called solfege.
You could as easily sing one-two-three-four-five, if you preferred, except you might run into trouble. Solfege accounts for notes in between Do and Re for the half-step intervals, whereas counting numbers… well, “one and a half” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
The modern modes didn’t originate with the Greeks. The names that the ancient Greeks gave to different styles of music were applied arbitrarily to the modes that were developed in the middle ages in Europe but there’s actually no stylistic connection between the two.
Check the Wikipedia article on mode.
It doesn’t really make any impact at all in terms of the sound of the music.
However, if a certain tune is played in a certain key, it may or may not place all the notes of the melody within the comfortable range of your voice. Sing a song in the wrong key (for you) and you may end up screeching or droning.
It is said that Pete Townsend, while in The Who, often wanted to sing some of his songs himself, and constantly tried to find keys that lead singer Roger Daltrey could not sing in. Daltrey simply adapted himself to the new keys. I don’t know if the story is true, but if so, it explains why singing along with The Who is often extraordinarily difficult.
While the explanations about chord progressions you have received are valid, you have to also allow for the possibility that your guitar player simply didn’t have a very good imagination when assigning chords to melodies.
Then again, even if he was right, the songs you list are all perennial favorites, loved and listened to by millions, decades after their initial market run, earning untold royalties for their copyright holders. Who cares if you’re original if you’re rich? 
Primarily cultural. There are plenty of music traditions in the world where vibrato is not standard.
Yes, it can be done on many instruments. A vocalist with great control over their voice can use this skill to embellish a long note. Often the vocalist is simply showing off the fact that they can do it, but that level of skill, when combined with an equally well-honed artistic sensibility, can result in a performance that takes your breath away.
Largely, it doesn’t (see the discussions in this thread and elsewhere about temperament). However, in the music of the past few decades which is dominated by guitar, different keys can result in differently-voice chords on that instrument (arrangements of the letter notes of the chord played in different octaves), which can provide a difference in the overall sound.
My limited understanding of the current literature suggests that there is not even an agreement on the underlying cause of tone-deafness, much less a universally recognized method of treatment. But I admit I’m way out of my league on this particular subject
Uh, no, they stand for specific notes. Promise (the names are the first sillables in a song in which the first sillable of each of the first verses followed that progression, although actually the first sillable in latin was Ut). And for specific keys. Do mayor is the one where none is modified (no b or #). There’s no half-note between mi and fa nor between si and do; everything else can be either b or #.
I’m not asking what’s solfeo called in English, I’m asking how do I translate “clave de fa” to English letters.
Actually, it’s not the fourths and fifths. In Equal Temperament, they are only a cent* off from their pythagorean equivalents, which can’t even be perceived by most people (IIRC, the average threshold of perception for tonal differences is 3 cents).
It’s the thirds. A major third in ET is 14 cents wider than in pythagorean tuning, which is more than noticable. It must have sounded jarringly sharp to ears accustomed to PT, and I can understand the resistance.
*A cent is a frequency difference between two tones equivalent to the 1200th root of 2.
There is a school of thought that agrees with you, but it is not universal. The Do mayor you refer to would be the key of C.
Guido of Arrezzo (@990-@1033) taught his music students according to the concept of hexachords. The names Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la (as you describe, taken from a plainchant in which each verse began on successively higher notes of what had become known as the Ionian Mode) were applied to notes as they lay in six-note runs beginning on the notes C, F and G.
Music was vocally based at the time, so the “full range” of notes at the time ran from G below low C (G2, I believe, I was never taught according to that system) to E above high C (E5, I think).
Using this system and creative capitalization, each note had a unique name:
G ut (often spelled with the greek letter Gamma, giving rise to the English word “gamut”, a contraction of “gamma ut”
A re
B mi
C fa ut (fa of the G hexachord, ut of the C hexachord)
D sol re
E la mi
F fa ut (fa of the C hexachord, ut of the F hexachord, nothing in the G hexachord, which ended on E la mi)
G sol re ut
A la mi re
B fa mi
c sol fa ut
d la sol re
e la mi
f fa ut
g sol re ut
a la mi re
b fa mi
c sol fa
d la sol (no I don’t know if this is where the group De La Soul got their name)
e la
So the practice of assigning the ut, re, mi names arbitrarily to the letter names goes back about a thousand years.
Some current music teachers like to fix the do re mi names to specific letters (C=Do, D=Re), but not all teachers do.
Brief historical background - originally, there were far more clefs, with a scribe selecting whichever one made the notes fit best onto the five lines. Gradually, standardisation set in, although even in Bach’s time there were clefs in use which we don’t see today.
And there’s four in common use - treble, bass, alto (C3, used by violas) and tenor (C4, used by cellos, basses, bassoons and trombones…and I think that’s it?!)
As said above, cultural (although maybe there’s a psychological element…we need a music psychologist to answer that one…)
And ideally, a musician has complete control over their use of vibrato (both frequency and amplitude) and can use it continuously across a sequence of notes or as an expressive tool on a single one. But it’s a skill which requires a very secure and accurate technique, which requires time and effort to learn (and to teach )
A couple of reasons:
- the characteristics of individual instruments. For example, a vast number of violin concertos are written in A, D or G, because this allows virtuosic writing for the instrument, using chords & arpeggios & double-stops (i.e. lots of fast impressive stuff
) to be implemented most easily. Also, these keys allow the greatest use of the open strings (G/D/A/E) which have a more resonant sound than stopped notes and therefore can be useful when writing for a solo instrument to be heard above an orchestra.
Fish - I’m not sure the ‘natural-sharp’ is needed in the example at the bottom of your page. I don’t see anything wrong with just writing an A sharp. I’d expect to see the natural-sharp as a cancellation of a double-sharp.
Here’s one that numerous folks have tried to explain to me but it just hasn’t clicked. Why is music for different instruments written in different keys? Why, if every instrument in a concert band played the note denoted by the lowest line on the treble clef, would they not all be playing E?
Guys, Nava is Spanish, and in Spain they call the notes by those syllables. It’s not a question of fixed do vs. movable do; it’s just her language.
do re mi fa sol la si = C D E F G A B
It’s confusing because in English we use those syllables too (using “ti” for “si”), but not in the same way.
Nava, what do you call the other notes in the chromatic scale? For example, if you raise do © by a half step, what would you call it? (In English it would be C sharp or D flat)
Thank you both, scotsandrsn and ErinPuff. This is one of those things that for some reason nobody seems to think of putting in the dictionary (and I have some seriously heavy dictionaries).
The half note between Do and Re would be Do sostenido or Re bemol. So, Fa can only be sostenido (since a Fa bemol would be a Mi), while Si can only be bemol (since a Si sostenido would be Do).
Except in this case, it’s a cultural thing. In Europe (Nava is Spanish, and I’ve played a fair amount of music published in France) do is C, re isD, etc.
You get songs in ‘la minor,’ for example.
Aaaaand, I’m about 15 minutes behind, aparently.