There must be many. Some of them have become trite by now.
There are 12 separate “tones” in an octave and only 7 letters used to name them. Isn’t it neat that there are 12 hours on a clock and 7 days in a week? Wonder why we have those numbers cropping up in music.
There’s the Cycle of Fifths (or Fourths) used to teach/remember the key signatures and the order of #'s and b’s in them. If you put them on a clock face (remembering to use the same “hour” for the three keys that are spelled differently (C#/Db, F#/Gb, B/Cb)) there’s a handy way to remember the basics of much of theory.
If you do a similar thing with the notes themselves, starting with your favorite note at the noon/midnight hour, it’s not too hard to keep up with such things as intervals and chord voicings and such.
With only that few “ingredients” in music, isn’t it baffling how so many pieces of music have been created that appear to be totally different? How much longer before we’ve used up all the music available?
Correction: I thought it was accepted that there are eight (8) tones in the major scale and five (5) tones in the minor scale. Beyond this, don’t think too much about these things. Like, 12 months in a year and 12 eggs in a dozen, and 13 at a table…
No, there are 7 tones in the major scale, the 8th is the octave of the root and so doesn’t count. There are also 7 tones in the minor scale. A scale with 5 tones is called a pentatonic scale and can be either major or minor.
Major scales have eight tones if you include the repeat of the first one. There are only seven before the repeat.
The five-tone scale you refer to is the pentatonic. There are major and minor pentatonic scales. There are also at least three flavors of the eight-tone (I prefer seven-tone since the repeat of the first makes the eighth) minor scales:
Natural Minor (example A Minor): A B C D E F G A-octave Uses the same notes as the C Major scale. Natural Minor is also referred to as the Aeolian Mode.
Melodic Minor (ascending) (Again in A): A B C D E F# G# A-octave
Melodic Minor (descending) (Again in A): A-octave G F E D C B A (same as A Natural Minor)
Harmonic Minor (example in A): A B C D E F G# A
As for the 12 magic it’s just that before the convention of the tempered scale, and before the settling into the piano keyboard as a representation of the “valid” notes to be used in music (Western music specifically), most instruments are capable of producing all manner of tones that are outside our usual musical language. Other cultures have many more than 12 available tones to use.
12 is used for lots of things because it is easily divided by 2, 3 and 4. 60 is common (a-ha, seconds in a minute, minutes in an hour) because that adds 5 and 10. Now you’ve got a unit that can easily be divided by almost anything. The next prime number is 7, so that gets used a lot as well.
It’s not that wierd, it’s just the easy way to do things, mathematically speaking.
If you want to get into the theory of the 12-toned system and how we got it sorted out, please ask–I love to pontificate.
Well, NoCoolUserName, the main reason I posted this thread was hopefully to get into some of the oddities of Music Theory without having to say so outright. I was just hoping enough other Dopers had had some thoughts about the peculiarities, the math, the science, and the aesthetics of Music to want to swap some ideas on it.
I got a book for Christmas that I have yet to get back into. It’s about Temperament and gets into the history of it. But if you want to expound on it (or the 12-tone system in general) have at.
