Scales - I'm still confused!

[knobby]

I understand (a bit) about scales, but some things confuse me. Take the piece of music below:-


Youll notice that it is in F Major - all Bs played flat. But there are no Bs, so whats the point of marking the piece F Major, other than to confuse the hell out of people like me :hb I just dont get it and its doin me ead in!

Can anyone explain please?

 

[george garside]

if its any concelation many Scottish pipe marches are written in A but are G sharpless! it doesn't alter fact that they are correctly notated in A. The 'scale' in either case is that of F or A respectively it just happens that some tunes have been thought up without the Bb or whatever

george

 

[knobby]

if its any concelation many Scottish pipe marches are written in A but are G sharpless! it doesn't alter fact that they are correctly notated in A. The 'scale' in either case is that of F or A respectively it just happens that some tunes have been thought up without the Bb or whatever

george

This is what I don't understand. Take the piece shown above. Tippex out the flat sign and it's in C Major, and you would play it exactly the same. So why bother adding the flat sign - it just doesn't seem to serve any purpose at all.

 

[george garside]

same could be said about A without a G# i.e. should it be D - there is a technical reason which perhaps the forums theorists can elucidate - meanwhile just get on with it and paly the notes that are there!

george

 

[Jim the box]

I understand (a bit) about scales, but some things confuse me. Take the piece of music below:-
[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

Youll notice that it is in F Major - all Bs played flat. But there are no Bs, so whats the point of marking the piece F Major, other than to confuse the hell out of people like me :hb I just dont get it and its doin me ead in!

Can anyone explain please?

Sorry to complicate things Knobby but I think youll find it is in D minor (the D minor chords and the D at the end give it away).

Hence the flat in the key signature, I hope this explains.

 

[knobby]

I give up :hb :hb :hb

 

[Jim the box]

I give up :hb :hb :hb

Dont give up.

As a rule (not always but the majority of the time) a piece of music will finish on a note (maybe a chord) and especially the chord in the bass that the piece is written in unless it changes key.

If you look at your music it finishes with a D note and a D (minor) chord hence as I say the piece of music is in D minor.

Now the key signature for D minor is 1 flat (Bb) and there you go, try this on other music that you have. :tup:

 

[knobby]

It just doesn't make sense to me. It's a bit like saying that 2+2=4, except on a Friday when it only equals 3.5, and if there's an "R" in the month, the moon is full and you're wearing green pants then it's 5!

 

[Jim the box]

It just doesnt make sense to me. Its a bit like saying that 2+2=4, except on a Friday when it only equals 3.5, and if theres an R in the month, the moon is full and youre wearing green pants then its 5!

I guess that you havent tried it out on other music yet? :?

 

[knobby]

I guess that you havent tried it out on other music yet? :?

Not yet, but I will.

But............. I still dont see how it makes any difference to the sound of the music. Taking the example I have posted, it appears to me (now) that whether it is in D Minor, F Major or C Major it would sound exactly the same. Or am I missing something big?

 

[Jim the box]

I guess that you havent tried it out on other music yet? :?

Not yet, but I will.

But............. I still dont see how it makes any difference to the sound of the music. Taking the example I have posted, it appears to me (now) that whether it is in D Minor, F Major or C Major it would sound exactly the same. Or am I missing something big?[/quote]

The only thing that you are missing is convention, it is convention that dictates that music is written on 5 lines, and it is convention that the piece of music that you posted had 1 flat.

I could write the same music with 5 flats and sharpen a load of notes or 5 sharps and flatten a load of notes, there is nothing wrong with either way except that it is easier to read in the key that convention dictates. :tup:

 

[smdc66]

knobby, this type of thing has baffled me too, but think we may have a lot of theory to learn...

though i am particularly confused now for some reason because when you refer to a circle of 5th diagram, F has 1 flat as in the music above and you flatten the b's (if any)

is there a more detailed circle of 5ths that we need to look at ?

it appears d minor key also has 1 flat (b) (unsure how to work that out though) :? i thought you could work out the key just by the sharp or flat at the start of the music but maybe i'm missing something again (obviously) - do you also have to look at the chords played also :?:



:ugeek:

 

[Glenn]

Every key signature can mean either major or minor without looking at the notes themselves.
The simplest is C major (no flats or sharps) and its relative minor is A (down 3 semitones).
The tell tale signs that it is minor is the augmented 7th, namely you raise the 7th note of the scale one semitone.
Thus in the case of A minor the G becomes a G#.
Music in a minor scale has that melancholic sound in generral even though the convention is to use the major scale key signature.
I am sure this makes it no clearer but if you play the piece you attached I am sure you would agree it sounds minor.
In the case for your music piece the augmented note for D minor is C #.
This note appears in the second and fourth staves.
Also, the chord indicated in thge bass is commonly a D minor which is a bit of a give away.

 

[donn]

The tell tale signs that it is minor is the augmented 7th, namely you raise the 7th note of the scale one semitone.
Thus in the case of A minor the G becomes a G#.

Theres a good deal of information about this in the wikipedia article Minor scale. According to their classification, that augmented 7th belongs to the harmonic minor.

The present example looks like what they call the Hungarian minor scale, with both 7th and 4th augmented. I was talking to some of my Balkan brass band colleagues about this very same stuff last night, and wish I had read that article beforehand! The piece in question there had been written out with 3 sharps, but turns out to be G minor Hungarian as best as I can make out, which would call for two flats. Either way it wont line up so well with the key signature and there will be frequent accidentals.

The natural minor is the one thats really the evil twin of the major scale, having all the same notes but just starting in a different place.

One place I think this may show up for accordion players is the III chord; in the key of C, for example, E. Well, really Em, right? because the G third is minor ... but if you were really playing A harmonic minor, it would be E, does that make sense?

 

[knobby]

Whoosh!

Sent from my ST21i using Tapatalk 2

 

[donn]

turns out to be G minor Hungarian as best as I can make out, which would call for two flats.

... er, not so much actually, as theres a lot of E that I guess would have to be Eb for G minor Hungarian, and the raised 4th isnt so consistent ... so more leaning towards G melodic minor, but more thorough investigation of Eastern European scales will probably dispose of that pretty quick.

And it strikes me in the process that Im kind of losing the plot here, in terms of what key signature has to do with anything, as only major and natural minor really line up with ordinary key signatures. At my rather modest level of theoretical sophistication, one could wonder whether Im really very well served by trying to label a piece as major or minor - when there are several variations on minor that most of us couldnt account for without looking it up. If you think the western world is confined to only one or two, note that the wikipedia articles commonly identify a tune or two from various pop artists, and they manage to do it with a lot more obscure scales than weve mentioned so far.

But it does seem to me pretty clear that in the present case - that Slavonic number - theres a Bb in the scale even though it doesnt happen to be represented in the melody or harmony, and hence it should be in the key signature. Whatever the name of the key.

 

[dunlustin]

Wow this one has prompted some interest !
I hope this will help (I'm sure you know some of the stuff):
There are 2 basic sets of scales, major and minor. What makes them different is the gaps between the notes.
Major: C D E F G A B C On your keyboard you can see the gaps between these notes are W W H W W W H where W = whole and H = half tone.
Minor: A B C D E F G A ..................................... " .................................. W H W W H W H (This is slightly simplified but it works.)
To find the minor key from its "relative" major go back 3 semitones, so Cmajor , whole tone to B, half tone to A. So A minor is the key which has no sharps or flats - like Cmajor.
F major (your question) go back three semitones and you get D so Dminor has one flat.
Why, because a major scale goes W W H so in F you need F G A Bb to get that semitone. Try writing out some scales to see how it works
Why for example do Gmajor and Eminor both have one sharp? Hint - look at the intervals.Going the other way, which major key has the same number of sharps as Bminor.
Why does a major chord (triad) sound different from a minor one? Answer because although there is the same gap between root and dominant (say C to G) there are 4semitones from C to E but only three from C to Eb.

How to: Your tune keeps going towards D - a good guide. It ends on D - an even better guide. It has loads of D stuff in the bass - still more, and the 3 chords used are Dm Gm Am - I V IV or (fairly) standard 3 chord harmony for Dmin
Why not Dmajor because the gaps are wrong - no F# but F instead - a Minor third.
Your tune complicates matters by having a G# and not a G - special cases you can afford to ignore for quite a while.

Note to those who know I missed stuff out - I know I did and Knobby doesn't need to know for now.

 

[Pippa]

But............. I still dont see how it makes any difference to the sound of the music. Taking the example I have posted, it appears to me (now) that whether it is in D Minor, F Major or C Major it would sound exactly the same. Or am I missing something big?

Yeah - its not really the written key signature that determines the key - even if this piece was learnt by ear, nothing written down at all, it would still be in D minor because thats what its based on, chord wise, melody wise, etc. Because its in D minor, IF there was a B, it would need to be flattened to fit in with the rest of the tune... I guess thats what the key signature is telling you!

 

[Jack Campin]

I have a LOT of information about this in my modes tutorial:

http://www.campin.me.uk/Music/Modes/

It has hundreds of examples. Uses ABC notation.

Pipe tunes in A are never in three sharps. A pipe chanter has a fixed two-sharp scale. So when they omit a G, its a G natural, not a G sharp.

 

[jarvo]

Scales is scales ....it's one of those few facts in life that I don't question/mull over /get arsey about..........I do look at a piece sometimes and a little voice says "why the frog was writ like this...with two F sharps , a Satsuma and an aspirate Z " and another little voice says " because it was .....okay? Just play it !"

.....and then I get my little pencil and make all the alterations notes etc that I need to make it easy......ier...........so for example where the key / stave causes a note to be written oddly (Port Arthur Blues - keeps throwing up E#.....confusesd the heck out of me when first reading ...so I just pencilled in F ....)

....I think that reading scales and knowing what to do with them is a bit like that prayer ....best-known form is:


God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,


The courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.


I like that mostly except for the first word ......but that's me....

Jarvo