Mixolydian mode, I believe - also referred to as a pentatonic scale - but I’m definitely getting out of my depth at this point!
Yes, I’ve seen the occasional piece with sharps on it, but they seem to be the exception, not the rule.
My instructor still sings canntaireachd when teaching me a tune.
Not quite. Mixolydian mode is just a major scale shifted up five degrees. So G Mixolydian is the same as C major, but going from G to G instead of C to C.
(A major scale, BTW, is the same as Ionian mode, and a minor scale is the same as Aeolian mode. The rest of the modes, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and Locrian are less commonly used but great fun nonetheless.
Pentatonic scales, as the name would suggest, consist of five tones and are directly related to the 8-note scales. A major pentatonic scale takes the first, second, third, fifth and sixth notes of a regular major scale. So C major pentatonic is C, D, E, G, A. You can have minor pentatonics (and pentatonics in any other mode) by taking the same five notes from the corresponding 8-note scale.
friedo, as I say, I’m getting out of my depth, but I was relying on this passage from The Pitch and Scale of the GHB:
Isn’t that saying the same thing as this passage from the link you gave?
You don’t get a flattened 7th just by shifting C Major up 5 degrees, do you? The C major and G major both use T-T-S-T-T-T-S, don’t they?
[I’m not trying to be contrary, BTW - I’m stretching the limits of my music theory, and would appreciate any guidance you can give.]
I’m really reaching back into the depths of my memory, but I think the various modes correspond to what you would get if you start on a note and leave out the sharps and flats (i.e. press all the white keys on the piano). So, if you start at C, you get a major scale, if you start at A, you get a minor scale. If you start at G (G-Major has F-sharp in it) and leave out F-sharp, you’ll get a flattened 7th.
So, C-major and G-major both have same sequence, but C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C has a different set of tones and semitones from G-A-B-C-D-E-F-G.
Yes, that site says the same thing as I was saying, it just approaches it from a different direction. One definition of Mixolydian mode is just “major scale with a flatted 7th tone” but I prefer “major scale shifted up five notes.” Same thing.
Example:
C major is C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C.
Flat the 7th tone, and you have C, D, E, F, G, A, Bb, C. That is C Mixolydian. It has the same intervals as a major scale except the 7th degree is minor instead of major.
The intervals in a major scale go T-T-S-T-T-T-S, whereas in Mixolydian, they go T-T-S-T-T-S-T. Now, shift C Mixolydian down five degrees, and you get
F, G, A, Bb, C, D, E, F. That goes T-T-S-T-T-T-S, the pattern of a major scale, and is indeed F major!
Of course C Major and G Major are exactly the same intervalwise. But you don’t get G Major when shifting C up five degrees. (Think “transpose” when I say shift.) You keep the same notes in the base scale, but start it in a different place. So if we take C major, which is plain C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, and shift it up five degrees, we get G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, which follows the pattern T-T-S-T-T-S-T. That’s G-Mixolydian. G Major would be G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G, which goes T-T-S-T-T-T-S.
Does that help? If not, let me know. I love this subject. 
(Last post was directed at Mr. Piper.)
RitterSport:
You are right about C major and A minor both having no black notes. If you take C major (or any major scale) and shift it up six degrees, (so you’re playing the exact same notes, but starting on A instead of C) then you get A minor. Which is also called A Aeolian. But you don’t want to just eliminate sharps and flats when figuring out a mode. If you ever learned the Circle of Fifths, remember that each of the 12 major keys has a distinct number of sharps or flats. A given mode will have the same sharps and flats as its parent key.
The confusion arises in determining what a parent key is. The simple definition of “mixolydian” is that it’s a major scale with a flatted seventh. So if you say C Mixolydian, you think “OK, that’s C major but with Bb instead of B.” But I prefer the more precise definition that it is a major scale rotated up five degrees. If you go by that, then you say, “OK, C Mixolydian is the same as F Major, but starting on C.” So that way you can think of C Mixolydian as related to F Major instead of C Major.
The advantage of this (and this is purely IMHO) is that instead of having to remember what every single mode does to a scale (remember, there are seven modes all told) you only have to figure out how many degrees to rotate a scale you already know.
Examples:
Ionian mode: Same as a major scale.
Dorian mode: Major scale with minor 3rd and 7th. Or a major scale starting on the second degree.
Phrygian mode: Minor 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th. Or a major scale starting on the third degree.
Lydian mode: Augmented 4th. Or a major scale starting on the fourth degree.
Mixolydian mode: Minor 7th. Or a major scale starting in the fifth degree.
Aerolian mode: Minor 3rd, 6th, and 7th. Or the same as a minor scale. Or a major scale starting on the sixth degree.
Locrian mode: Minor 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th and diminished 5th. Or a major scale starting on the seventh degree.
Aaah… so that’s what that’s called. My teacher sings it, he never really taught it to me. Instead, he says “make up your own vocables.” Too bad I’m used to solfeggio (do re mi etc.) and that just gets weird with the odd scales.:rolleyes:
Note that some instruments have their own notation: drums have a staff like notation but it differs from standard notation quite a bit. Guitars have systems like tabs and chord notations. An intermediate guitarist will glance over the tab/chords for a song to learn it but rely mainly on ear to learn the song. There are just too many effects that are possible. A good guitarist doesn’t need the notation. But there is no standard notation for playing the guitar with your tongue while it is on fire.
My tongue? Ow!
That depends: Is it the tongue or guitar that’s on fire?
I found the following site that has a nice FAQ about Indian music for Western musicians, http://www.chandrakantha.com/faq/w_musician. Note, however, that I know very little about Indian music and nothing about musicology, so I have no idea how accurate the information on that site is.
Depends. A perfect fifth has a frequency ratio of 2:3. A perfect octave has a frequency ration of 1:2. Pythagorus noticed that if you go up by fifths, dropping back by octaves, you will make a circle that ends on a pitch just slightly above the note you started on. The difference is (3/2) to the twelfth power divided by 2 to the seventh, which is very close to one, but not quite. That’s called the Comma of Pythagorus.
Distributing the Comma throughout the octave is temperament. Equal temperament means that each step has the same ratio. Bach’s Das Wohltemperirte Clavier, the Well-Tempered Clavier, may have been written for temperament, but possibly an unequal temperament. It seems that there is disagreement on that.
If you sound a single note on an instrument, it is seldom a pure note. The harmonics of the note also appear, in various fashions. So, we’re used to hearing those harmonics sounded together, and perhaps that is why it sounds good to us. (It is a value judgement, the sound of music is in the ear of the beholder.) The second and third harmonic, sounded together without the original note, is a perfect fifth. A perfect (not-tempered) major chord has the ratios of 4:5:6, so the 4:6 ratio is the perfect fifth, but notice that the three notes also bear the same relation to each other that the fourth, fifth, and sixth harmonic do. In other words, a major chord is just three harmonics of a single note, starting two octaves (fourth harmonic) above it.
At the risk of being gauche, I would like to return to the first two questions originally posted by DeepField (the third has already been answered).
Didn’t the Chinese or Hindus (or Mayas, Incas, etc.) develop their own notation?
Can their music, or every other “non-occidental” music be written down without loosing anything?
Per Gardner Read in his book Musical Notation, eastern Asians do indeed have their own notational system. Alas, he provides no examples. He does thoroughly explain Western notation, including a lot of “advant-garde” stuff like quarter-tones. Great book if you’re interested in the subject.
As any composer will tell you (if you can get him to stop yanking out his hair long enough to chat), it is impossible to write out any music without losing something along the way. Sure, you can show exact pitches and approximate durations, but the subtleties of articulation and small time changes just can’t be shown.
Here is a page with some examples of various kinds of Indian notation.
To answer the third question (well, actually, to confuse you to no end) there are many other notes in the spectrum, check out http://www.justintonation.net/ for a description of the most bizarre approach to tuning I’ve ever witnessed:
“JUST INTONATION is any system of tuning in which all of the intervals can be represented by ratios of whole numbers, with a strongly-implied preference for the smallest numbers compatible with a given musical purpose.”
I play with a pedal-steel player who has dabbled in Just Intonation (www.b0b.com) and all I can say is… w0w…
Neandertals used diatonic scales. So I think certain
sounds and sound combinations are pleasing as a matter
of anatomy.
http://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/fl-compl.htm
Of course, all such things as harmony go out the window when
talking about Country music. Those guys hit 12 different keys in
one song and fumble through 78 microtones in two beats. So
some people do find disharmony pleasing.
What about Harry Partch?
Or the pygmies who put a june bug between their lips and modulate it like a jew’s harp?
The phrase just intonation merely means tuning on pure rational intervals rather than irrational compromises, e.g. 4:5 rather than 1:2**(1/3). The Just Intonation Network makes a fetish of numeric notation; that’s partly so that exotic intervals, like 4:7, can be written without awkward workarounds (and without bias in favor of those with standard letter notation).
If I ever learn to play guitar (know any teachers in southern Alameda County?) I want to get a Meantone fretboard.