The history of tuning in Western music is complicated and abstruse, and I won’t go into detail about it in this post, but you can learn how it works here. This was a big deal, because in the usual tuning systems of Bach’s era, only some of the keys sounded good, while others sounded horrible. The name refers to Bach’s preferred tuning system, which made it possible to play (sort of) in tune in every key. The Well-Tempered Clavier is a book of JS Bach compositions for keyboard instruments in each of the twelve major and twelve minor keys. * though actually, this keyboard is still coloured according to the C major scale.Twelve-tone equal temperament is socialism, Make Intonation Just Again You could try the fully 12-note world, and see if you like it: get hold of an isomorphic keyboard*, such as this one.Īnd try playing some music notated on a chromatic staff. In this sense, it's a bit like a natural language (like English) - it isn't necessarily the only logical way to express ideas - it's just one way to express ideas that has evolved through various accidents of history. The only time I use those terms is when I'm talking to someone else about music because, for historical reasons, it has become 'the common language' of music. Neither do I, and when I make or play music, I don't think about note names or sharps and flats at all - I don't find it useful. But once you move away from that 7-note scale in your composition, of course the presumption of a 7-note scale just makes things more awkward. It can make things easier when you're dealing with pieces of music that actually stick rigidly to the 7-note scale. Is music theory easier/more practical under 7 letter notes as opposed to 12 or something? Does it have a practical usage with scales, or 3rds and 5ths or whatever? It's basically just the way it happened historically - we came up with the idea of a 7-note scale being something that sounded good before we came up with the idea of all possible 7-note scales living within a 12-note 'super-scale'. Why do we have sharps and flats when we could have indicated these notes with different letters? So obviously, we've developed theory and notation around this and it seems to work quite well, but why couldnt we developed a system for twelve letter notes. Some music, 12 tone music, would get simpler but most would get more complex. The current C major scale would become ACEFHJLA (I am guessing that you would also like to start the simplest all white notes scale on A rather than C). If we switched to your 12 letter system, you would need to learn odd gaps in the scales. When you are restricted to one key, 7 notes is enough. Think of the song Doe A Deer which uses just 7 notes. On the note names, a large part of the answer is that a very large proportion of music (in all genres) is wholly or mostly restricted to one 7 note key at one time. Look outside music: it would clearly be beneficial if the same units of measurement were used in all countries rather than feet, miles, pints, etc in some countries and metres, kilometres, litres, etc in others. There are some aspects that could be improved and simplified but the inertia of the current system is too great. Instead, it has gradually evolved over a very long period. The main reason is that there was never a committee that debated and designed the theory of music and ensured that it was simple and logical.
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