Technically, though (going by the relative number of sharps or flats), Dorian is “brighter” than Aeolian. (C minor/Aeolian–3 flats; C Dorian–2 flats)
But if you wanted to, it goes after Phrygian.
Capos on well-made guitars usually hold pitch pretty well. It’s not so much that a capo produces an undesirable shift in pitch as it affects the tone of the instrument.
Most obvious is what strings are ringing open in a standard-tuned chord position and which are in a capoed chord position.
Perhaps, but I’m going by how they sound to me. It didn’t even occur to me to judge them by the number of sharps and flats in the key. Interesting. Dorian sounds more aggressive to me than Aeolian. I suppose you can say it’s brighter as well.
Modes don’t have sharps or flats. What you’re describing is the accidentals acquired by modes when they’re based on C - in other words, you’re examining modes from an inherently-major/minor perspective.
Locrain is a twentieth-century creation. You could place it wherever you want, but it still would be inconsistent with its surroundings.
What about Taps? It’s in a major key, but doesn’t sound particularly bright or happy.
It would be all to easy to go through the musical canon and find all the exceptions. But Pulykamell’s further statement:
is complemented by the emotional associations of the piece in question. There’s nothing intrinsically happy or sad about Taps - it’s got little to distinguish it structurally from the opening of Fanfare for the Common Man. But we somehow ‘know’ that it’s a sad piece, through the cultural baggage we’ve all acquired.
I speak as a songwriter, composer, arranger and performer of western-genre music. Certain chords are traditionally used in specific manners or with a certain tendancy. This is taught in Harmony class in music school, which really means 18th Century Harmony. Some examples: a dominant 7th chord (V7) leans towards resolution as a tonic (I), which sounds “final” compared to diminished or augmented chords. Those are typically used as transition harmonies.
[And musical genres/idioms other than 18th C. harmony have their own cliches – the dom. 7th is such a fixture in jazz and rock that it cannot be described as “needing resolution” in all cases.]
I didn’t invent the “unstable” definition of an augmented chord or the “tendency” sound of a tritone. But using the conventional definitions is a big help in doing takedowns, or transcribing music from sound to paper. Often in a work with a lot of instruments playing at once I find it difficult to tell exactly what notes are being played at first, but I might think, “that has an unstable sound, I’ll bet the notes define an augmented triad,” which leads me to the correct analysis.
Is this from culture, from teaching, or inate? I don’t know. Probably a little of each. To me, a dirge in a minor key does sound sad. Is it because I have been taught to think that way? Maybe. Maybe not.
I agree with you that defining, say the key of A minor as invoking emotion #1 and B minor as emotion #2 is probably a good example of how we fool ourselves (and you know all about that, Ianzin 
) but I must nitpick about your statement “It’s exactly the same darn piece of music.” Are you familiar with how equal temperment affects scales? If not, I wil briefly describe it – and this is only a concept, as IANA piano tuner.
A piano tuner starts at one pitch, say A, and tunes, not the next note on the piano, but a fifth up, E. Next to tuning octaves, 5ths or 4ths are the easiest to get exactly right using beats (heterodynes). After tuning E, he tunes the next 5th up, B, then F#, etc. Now if he were to tune each of these EXACTLY, he would find that by the time he arrived back at A, he would be a little off due to accumulated differences. No, not errors, but the mathematical relationship of pitches is such that the first A does not match the last A no matter how accurate the interim intervals are. Just take my word for it or start googling.
What to do? Equal temperment has the answer. As he tunes each 5th, he makes some slightly lower than the perfect value and some slightly higher, according to a table he has memorized. The sum of all the introduced “errors” should exactly compensate and A’ = 2 * A.
As a consequence, not all scales are the same. Some intervals are stretched, some are compressed, and the note intervals that have been stretched and compressed are different for each scale.
So if a pianist transposes a work, the end result is not the same as a computer transposing by mathematically raising all tones. In a nitpick sense, of course.
Can this be heard by the human ear? Probably only those with extremely good or well-trained ears. Personally, I have often felt I have been able to tell what key something is played in by the “feeling” it invokes, and I am right perhaps 90% of the time. But I have noticed that I can do this much more accurately for some instruments than others, and my theory is that the individual characteristics of each instrument (open G on guitar sounds diff from a fretted G, even if the same pitch) are subtle and perhaps subconcious clues.
For anyone who says that stringed (non-fretted) instruments play in pure tunings, consider this: if they did, wouldn’t that produce a serious conflict when the orchestra plays with a piano, which doesn’t? Therefore, I say that all modern players have adjusted to tempered tunings so much they aren’t aware of it. But it’s an argument that will probably never be settled.
Yes, that is perhaps a better way of expressing what I was getting at. Playing a tune with the capo on the 9th fret certainly has an impact on the overall timbre of the instrument, but I do think also that one could chose to position the capo, for the purpose of convenience or ease, such that the range of available pitches simply doesn’t “work” for whatever aesthetic reason.
Orchestral strings (and to a lesser extent other sections) rarely use equal temperament. String sections are adept at adjusting intonation for the circumstances - which yes, includes accomodating the equal temperament of the piano when necessary. But enharmonic modulations eg in Dvorak or Schubert always cause problems for players unfamiliar with the music - they’re so far off equal temperament by default that the enharmony doesn’t work. And if you ever get a chance to hear string players tackle Webern for the first time and you’ll hear how difficult they find it to stick to equal temperament.
Is that right? I thought all fifths are slighly flat and all fourths are slightly sharp in an equal temperament system. I thought the ratios between notes were absolutely fixed, and a major triad in C retains the same harmonic relationship as a major triad in F#. I thought that was the whole issue Mozart had about equal temperament. It’s possible I’ve been taught wrong, so please educate me if this is incorrect.
Your site seems to agree with what I’ve been taught:
Emphasis mine.
Pulykamell, I think you’re right, with reference to that site.
Maybe I confused the issue, not being a piano tuner myself. First, a piano tuner puts felt next to two of the three strings used for most pitches to dampen them, so he is tuning only one string per note. Then, starting at A, he goes up a fifth, then down a fourth, up a fifth, etc. – this keeps the initial tuning range compact. The effect of up/down is theoretically the same as always up a fifth, of course, but if you shrink the fifths, you have to expand the fourths. If, after tuning a single octave, he ends up where he planned, he tunes the other single strings high & low in octaves, then removes the felt and matches the remaining strings with the tuned ones as unisons.
As far as what pitch an orchestra plays at, due to vibrato for a string section and due to multiple strings per note on a piano, I think it would be more correct to say it is a range rather than an exact hz value. This of course helps to disguise slight pitch differences and is largely what makes the “chorus” sound of a string section as compared to a single violin.
There is an additional factor we haven’t yet discussed. The human ear tends to hear, at the extreme ends of the keyboard, perfect octaves as slightly small. A tuner will adjust for this, but I don’t know how much in terms of cents.
So when is a piano in tune? When the customer is satisfied.
This is true - but it doesn’t cover solo string instruments, or quartets. It also doesn’t deal with string sections playing without vibrato - and it’s not entirely coincidental that the period-performance folks are more aware of intonation issues.
I never knew that!
It’s been so long since I heard about the extreme range octaves, that I thought I had better check some sources. Here’s one:
That’s actually quite interesting. I never knew that.
In regards to equal temperament, a lot of what I said about key color being lost in the transition from well-tempered tunings to equal tempered tunings has to do with the consistent frequency ratios of intervals that exist today in equal temperament. A song transposed to D flat from C on a tuned piano should sound mathemetically the same. The fifths should be flat by 2 cents. The fourths should be sharp by about the same amount in both keys. There really shouldn’t be any relative-pitch distinctions between the two keys.
Now, on a guitar, a fretted G and an open G are going to sound different. One, the tone is different from a fretted string and an open string. Two, the pressure you apply on the string with your finger slightly alters the frequency the string produces. Fret hard, fret soft, fret higher, fret lower and you will get miniscule fluctuations in your pitch. Not nearly enough to cause it to sound “out of tune,” but enough to keep the note from being perfect every time you play it.
reads
Wow. I’ve been a piano player from elementary to high school, and I always throught a Well-Tempered Clavier was referring to the pianist, not the piano. :o
My ignorance has been fought. Bravo!
I’m not seeing where they say it has “richer harmonics” on that site. It looks more like a movement to perform Verdi operas at the original pitch to be historically accurate and so the vocal range is more reasonable. Were you referring to some other source?
I too wonder about claims that there is anything intrinsic to a particular pitch or key that makes it qualitatively different than another. I can understand how different keys would have different characteristics on a particular instrument, but in an abstract sense, I don’t see how it’s possible. I mean, if you sequenced a piece in the key of C on synthesizer, and transposed it to C#, maintaining all the exact pitch relationships between the notes, I can’t see how there would be any qualitative difference other than one being slightly higher, and any previous mental associations the listener has formed with respect to each key. Sound waves resonate because of mathematical relationships, not because of any absolute demarcations on the continuum of pitch.
Where this has been talked about earlier is in respect to intonation systems other than equal temperament. You’re right, that with an exact division of the octave into 12 equal steps, there’s no difference between keys. But use any other intonation system, and differences between scales on different notes necessarily appear, because the twelve intervals are not all the same.
If you play C Aeolian, you use 3 flats. If you play C Dorian, you use 2 flats. Ergo, Dorian is less flat (and you could say “brighter”) than Aeolian.
Why are you so smugly trying to cloud ErinPuff’s point with your “major/minor perspective” strawman?
She (?) could just as well have used E Aeolian and E Dorian as examples and the point still stands. Stop being so self righteous.