Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!rutgers!njin!princeton!pucc!ROGER
From: ROGER@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: theory behind the scales
Message-ID: <11271@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 10 Jul 90 03:09:51 GMT
References: <8547@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Reply-To: ROGER@pucc.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 55
Disclaimer: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article

In article <8547@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>, newsham@wiliki.eng.hawaii.edu (Timothy Newsham) writes:

>i am interested in finding out how our present (western) keyboards
>evolved and the theory behind them.  i know that the keyboard started
>out with the white keys and then keys where added (like Bb to avoid
>using tritones) but how did we originally arive at the 7 note scale
>that the modes are based on?

Well, keyboards have had the 7 + 5 arrangement for a LONG time.
Paintings from the 14thC make this clear.  By that time, there
was music with all 12 pitch-classes; and the theoretical existence
of these goes back a long way before that.

>i am interested at the foundations in
>the overtone series in particular.

Actually, there is less to this than meets the eye, as Tallulah
Bankhead once said.  All the damn theories of division of the
octave, or of the whole tone, or whatever, do not explain the
music being written when the theories were made.  Music theory goes
back to ancient Greece, and has been misunderstood and done badly
ever since.

This is not to say that the theories aren't interesting; just that
overtones wson't get you very far in ANY attempt to explain music.

>i have also read about a theory
>that the minor triad is generated by undertones but i fail to find
>out how when i look through the undertone series. anyone have any
>information on this or any good references for me to check out?

There's a good reason for this: the minor triad has nothing to
do with undertones.

Nor has it anything to do with 10:12:15 or whatever.  True,
that sounds like a minor triad, just the way 4:5:6 sounds like
a major triad.  But to derive a theory from this involves eventually
confronting the nasty issue of pieces beginning in C minor that
*ought* to resolve to A flat eventually (the fundamental...)

Better to think of minor as major with a screwy third.

>oh, and i am also interested in the scales that evolved seperately
>(ie. indian classical) and how those came about.

A good article on Mode is the one in the New Grove Encyclopedia.
It's by Harry Powers, is alas only about a third of what he wrote
and is still 75 pages, and is amazing in its scope.  All kinds of
world musics are covered, as is the growth of modal theory and
practice in the West.  In the 15 years since he wrote it, Powers
has written more, as have others; it's a BIG topic.

Roger Lustig (ROGER@PUCC.BITNET roger@pucc.princeton.edu)

Disclaimer: I thought it was a costume party!