📌This video is a revised re-upload. I originally uploaded this video in April 2022, but soon realised from the reaction in the comments that I had skimmed over a lot of detail when it came to the major scale and the tones and semitones. This was causing confusion for many viewers so I've now decided to replace that video with this new, updated version. I'm much happier with the explaination in this video. Sorry again for any confusion caused by the original edition. You can still view the original version if you like here: th-cam.com/video/r7aQQQsvxho/w-d-xo.html
@@thesuncollective1475 That is a really complicated question that would need a large book to answer it. Very briefly, we find musical intervals that have simple integer ratios consonant, However if these 'pure' intervals are stacked, things go slightly out of tune. Stacking twelve perfect fifths and then coming down seven octaves to what should be the original starting note gives a different pitch. (Look up Pythagorean Comma and Syntonic Comma for more information.) More formally, the octave is a doubling of frequency and any equal division will involve roots of two, which are irrational numbers. This means that they cannot be expressed as integer ratios - i.e. as pure musical intervals. The whole history of music everywhere in the world has been profoundly influenced by this.
@@chrisisbell3080 Thank you..Maths , Frequencies doubling its very cosmic stuff, I will have to go on a quest I feel to get to the bottom of it. Thanks. As a side note its interesting that Allan Holdsworth came up with his own math based system. I'm inclined to say he was right as it was much simpler. He realised, perhaps, a system which has ten ways of naming one chord is a weak and over complicated system !
Iirc, the "standard" mode was the aeolian, aka, the minor scale. And since they used to use the white keys, that's why they actually start in A, not in C
As he notes in the video, vocal music and lettered notes existed before the piano was invented. They chose to start the piano with C because it made sense at the time. Our current music system wasn't something which someone just sat down and wrote one day, it was an evolution over time with many different people and changes. For all the people who have ever wondered: if you actually want to know the reason why in more depth, the internet is full of music history and answers about scales, modes and how our current western music system evolved. If you ever say "i wondered why" about anything and you don't go find the answer, then it really wasn't that important to you.
@@stephenshoihet2590 I always wondered why we exist. But i never found the answer in the internet. I wonder why. 😎 Jokes aside. Your argument was sound enough in my opinion and i did like the small barb at the end. A much more interesting argument now that we are in this info overloaded/over-bloated reality.
Our choir learned to sing quartertones, bright or dark for each chord. This is extremely tough and takes a lot of practice and a great ear. But the effect is impressive
As someone who is just recently starting to learn the keyboard, the layout actually really helped me memorize the notes. I tinker around in E Major a lot and so I always know where E is, two keys to the left of the group of three black keys. The slight variance on the pattern with black keys is just enough to give every note it’s own little distinctive spot, regardless of what octave you’re in. (Which is also easy to tell just by looking at that pattern) If it were a perfectly symmetrical layout, either with those black keys added in or with just white keys, it’d be a lot harder to tell where you’re at, especially as a beginner. But as is, it’s akin to having little landmarks to go off of when you’re getting directions. Seems like it wasn’t even done purposefully but when I realized how much it was helping me I began to really appreciate the design of modern keyboards.
It wasn't until I started singing choir music that I really appreciated how the voice is the instrument standard notation is optimized for. It really makes it easy to sight-sing major, minor and modal music.
As a guitarist, I think showing the guitar fretboard would help illuminate this question. The keyboard-oriented labelling of the Major scale obscures the fact that It is blindingly obvious on a fretboard that there just isn't a semitone between B & C, and between E & F. At age 15 or so in the mid-Sixties I taught myself to play guitar by ear and with tablature and never learned to read sheet music. To me, the question initially appeared the other way around: "Why have these musical theorists assigned letters to some notes on the fretboard, but not others?"
@@Leftatalbuquerque So why are some of my faves New Order, Fatboy Slim, Bodyrockers, Alice Deejay, and on and on? It's not a matter of taste, it's a matter of utility. On a fretboard all the notes are equal, no black or white, key changes are easy.
Because your guitar is built for most general and latest music. This however doesn't explain to you in any way, shape or form, why we use 12 temperaments and not 53. Or with equal 19 temperaments, 63hz steps.
Writing B sharp also preserves the chord (or melody) shape on the staff, making it easier to read and remember once you get to the point you're reading several bars ahead of where you're playing.
Especially in certain keys where it's neater to write a minor second interval chord using B sharp, E sharp, C flat or F flat than it is to write a unison and present a confusion over which note gets the accidental.
I think this is probably why I've always been particularly confused on the use of B sharp. Despite playing music all my life and playing in the school band every single year, unlike my fellow students I was never able to sight-read, so any aspect of notation meant to help with sight-reading would just go right over my head because I'm not even able to read several measures ahead, so keeping the shape to make sight-reading easier just serves no purpose to me since I can't take advantage of it. I was, however, very good at memorizing the music, so despite having to spend hours handwriting my own notation of my own invention on the sheet to make it easier for me to learn, I was usually the first one to learn the piece to the point of no longer needing sheet music at all.
What an incredibly easy way to understand what you said, well done! This has been explained to me over and over, but because I have so little understanding of music and music theory, I never understood any of this. I'll have to go through this a couple of times, because you showed me things I didn't know that I didn't know.
The question that sticks in my mind is how the seven notes in the scale even got to be in the first place. Going by perfect intervals, a 12-tone system emerges clear as day, but I've always wondered why the white notes begin and end where they do on the circle of fifths.
That's a good question. I assume it's because it's just the scale you get by stacking perfect fifths until you get two consecutive semitones: F-C-G-D-A-E-B then you'd have F#, but then you'd get F, G, and F#, which I guess they found too dissonant together (they obviously wouldn't have had the names yet). My question has always been what does it even mean to "treat a different note as the tonic"? It's a phrase that's constantly thrown around yet never actually explained. The implication has always been that if one note is treated as the tonic, the chord built on that note will be resolved and chords built on other notes will not. But why? I personally have a completely different theory of what makes a mode resolved, the biggest difference being that tonality revolves around intervals and not individual notes, and "treating a chord as the tonic" pretty much boils down to that chord being the first you hear. What determines tonality beyond that is the relationship of a tritone resolving to a major third, and so tonality can very quickly become ambiguous, two major thirds being resolved at once. This probably doesn't sound like much like that but I can explain it more in depth if you want.
One day it struck me that the circle of fifths starts with the tonal note of the brightest mode and ends witht the darkest, for the white keys for example, it goes F C G D A E B- thats the tonal notes of lydian, major, mixolydian, dorian, minor, phrygian, locrian, which is all the modes in order of brightness What i do NOT understand is what makes a note the tonal
There are two explanations I can think of, based on how you construct your scale. I'll call these the "Pythagorean method" and the "Tetrachord method". In the *Pythagorean method*, you build a scale by stacking perfect fifths (a 3:2 frequency ratio) and wrapping around at the octave. With just one perfect fifth, your smallest interval is the 4:3 perfect fourth (what's left over between your fifth and the octave). If you add another perfect fifth, you end up with a new smallest interval: a 9:8 ratio, the whole tone. You can keep adding perfect fifths and that will stay the smallest interval until you max out at 5 distinct notes, and you've built a major pentatonic. As soon as you add a sixth perfect fifth, you introduce a new smallest interval, the diatonic semitone. This time you can fit in just one more perfect fifth before introducing an even smaller interval, the chromatic semitone, giving a diatonic scale (specifically, what we now call the Lydian). Then you can get up to 12 notes in your scale before finding something smaller than a chromatic semitone. So this method, stacking as many perfect fifths as you can for a given smallest interval, produces a natural sequence of (IIRC) 2, 5, 7, 12, 19, 31, and 53-note scales. Technically you can go higher but the smallest interval in a 53-tone scale is so tiny that it's almost imperceptible. (I should point out that twelve perfect fifths doesn't exactly complete the octave if they're tuned pure--no stack of fifths will ever reach an octave equivalent of the starting note--so strictly speaking the 12-tone chromatic scale is a no more natural stopping point than 19. It's just the one that the West settled on, mostly for convenience) The *Terachord method* is how the ancient Greeks conceived of scales (or "octave species"). An octave would be split into two perfect fourths plus a leftover tone. The perfect fourths were then filled in with two more notes to produce a four-tone subscale called a tetrachord, with both terachords following the same pattern. If the largest interval between adjacent tones in the tetrachord was a whole tone, the species was diatonic; if the largest interval was a minor third (meaning the rest was split into two semitones), it was chromatic; and if the largest interval was a "ditone" or major third (meaning the remainder was split into quarter tones), it was an enharmonic species. So really, all ancient Greek scales were in theory heptatonic, even their chromatic scales.
@@gwalla Here is a quote from a random internet text, so the source is not that great but the idea still remains and can help in following better research: "... The Gregorian modes, also known as the church modes, were developed from earlier musical traditions and sources, particularly in the medieval period. The modes are a system of organizing musical pitches that were used extensively in Western European sacred music from the 9th to the 16th centuries. The origins of the Gregorian modes can be traced back to ancient Greek music theory, which classified melodies based on different tonal systems known as tetrachords. These tetrachords were combinations of four pitches that formed the basis of scales. The Greeks had established several different tetrachord structures, which later influenced the development of the Gregorian modes. During the early Christian period, as the Gregorian chant was evolving, the early church musicians adapted the existing musical practices and theories to suit the needs of liturgical music. They incorporated elements from both Jewish and Byzantine music traditions. The modes provided a framework for composing and performing chant melodies that conveyed different moods and spiritual significance. The Gregorian modes were originally developed as eight distinct scales, each with its own characteristic pattern of whole and half steps. These modes were named after the ancient Greek regions: Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Hypodorian, Hypophrygian, Hypolydian, and Hypomixolydian. Later, two additional modes were added, making a total of twelve modes, which included Ionian and Aeolian. The modes were primarily used in monophonic chant compositions, such as Gregorian chant, where a single melody line was sung without accompanying harmony. Each mode had its own unique melodic characteristics and emotional qualities, and they were associated with specific liturgical texts and occasions. Over time, the system of Gregorian modes became an essential part of Western musical tradition and influenced the development of later music theory, including the major and minor scales that are widely used in Western music today."
I think a better explanation for having B# is harmony and scales. The chord G#B#D# is just the V chord of C# Major. If you notate it with C natural, then it would be understood as a different chord for a funcional point of view. In a sense, this is all done so that C# Major doesn't have any repeated note names (C and C#) so that the structure of the major scale is kept.
The original explanation made a lot of sense to me and answered a lot of questions I had about basic music theory. Your explanation doesn't make any sense to me because I don't know what you mean by "V chord of C# major."
I've watched lots of music theory videos trying to get a basic understanding of how scales and modes work, but everything until this video went in one ear and out the other because everyone seems to expect the viewer to have some prior knowledge of music theory. Starting with a history lesson from the beginning of Western music finally made something click for me.
@@CaesarSneezy i'm glad you understand his explanation. That still doesn't mean that the accidental thing is the main reason. In fact, having to write more accidentals is a side effect of the reason I've commented, because you would normally use the chords of your scale, while accidentals often don't belong in the scale. In fact, if you don't write tontal music i.e. if you write music that is not based on tonalities, you may end up writing more sharps than naturals if you use B# instead of C.
@@CaesarSneezy at a very basic level C# Major is a set of notes that start in C# and the distance between them is the same as in C Major (the tone tone semiton tone tone tone semitone explained in the video). So it is a scale that sounds as "good" and has a similar "bright" quality as C Major but with other set of notes. This means that we have all the notes of C sharped: C#, D#, E# F#, G#, A#, B#. If you rename E# to F and B# to C the relation between C Major and C# Major would be less obvious. The letter V is also the roman numeral 5, so in music theory the V chord is just the fifth chord of the scale. We started the scale from C# so the fifth note is G#. You may or may not know that chords in western music are typically structure by thirds and by default contain 3 notes. Taking that into account the V chord of C# Major is G# B# D#. If you write C instead of B# you don't have a third from G# because the way intervals are named is by counting how many differently named notes are in between: G A B C are 4 notes, so it would be a fourth. More precisely a diminished fourth, not a perfect fourth like ones in the video, because effectively it is as small as a major third (2 tones). So from the point of view of writing chords and harmony this is fucked up. There's much more depth to this, but I think I've already said a lot.
I think the note layout actually comes from the minor scale, not the major. A lot of plain chant was done in minor and our notation system comes from notating plain chant. It would also make sense to start your scale on A, not C.
About why we use C# or Cb. As I learned it‘s not only to avoid more accidentals. It‘s also to make intervals easier to read. If I‘m in the key of G#, a G# triad would be G# - B# - D#. The intervals still look like thirds in sheet music (like a G major triad). Would I use C, that chord would look like a suspended chord at first glance: G# - C - D#. It wouldn‘t resemlbe the familar triad structure we know from sheet music. So adding that C# actually makes the intervals and the chord easier to read.
10:44 Calling B a perfect fourth above g-flat is convenient but also troubling. It quickly drives home the fact we don't need a black key, but writing B above g-flat LOOKS like a third of some type (in this case an augmented third), whether it's on the staff or we look at the letter names. Yes, an augmented third does have the same semitone distance as a perfect fourth (when we're using equal temperament) but we really should write the enharmonic equivalent (c-flat) rather than B when describing a perfect fourth above g-flat.
It's in the aesthetics of how the piece looks. Accidentals consistent with the key signature (excepting C major/A minor where you pick one and stick with it) along with as few in the bar as possible are the unspoken rules of thumb hence why key signatures even exist.
It's also not even true. If using just intonated fifths, Cb is 23 cents (0.23 semitones) lower than B. It's only 12-tone equal temperament that identifies those two notes, and that was not the standard until centuries later.
Thanks for the video. History is always so important to put things in perspective and help us get the actual meaning of things. Everything is always in a context.
That is so much of the part that many people miss. They expect "theory" to explain all the whys and wherefores of our current western system, as if someone just sat down and created it all at once... but it was an evolution over hundreds of years with many different people and the way music is thought about has changed with time and culture too. So many beginners get themselves wrapped up in those questions and the best thing to do is just forget it, learn things because they "just are" and later when you have a solid understanding of the basics, come back to fill in the gaps. Adults do the same thing when trying to learn a second language (esp native English speakers) why is a dress masculine in Spanish when a woman wears it? Doesn't matter, it just is, learn it. A big reason children learn things more easily is they don't burden themselves with rules, they just repeat things until they know them. Adults think rules are some kind of shortcut to understanding something and it usually isn't. Why does something fall when I drop it? Gravity. How does gravity work? Nobody knows and I don't care; I just don't drop things that will break 😝
Imagine how confusing the piano would be if the black and white keys were evenly distributed. The black key that was once an F# in one octave, would now be the G# key in the next octave
Idk I think it would be the same as the guitar, violin, flute,... comes down to muscle memory, no matter how conplicated our brain somehow can do it. :)
That is not true. Look at the diagram at 0:58. C# is always the same number of of keys away from say A. It is just that octaves are represented more compactly. You can't see two F#s on that diagram, but if you could, they would be evenly spaced.
Just one comment: The more important reason why to use a B-sharp in the Moonglight Sonata example rather than to avoid a "mass of accidentals" by alternating C-sharp and C-natural comes from harmony: the dominant chord in C-sharp harmonic minor key HAS TO BE a G-sharp major chord (G-sharp B-sharp D-sharp) in order to keep the logical major triad shape of the chord.
@@bvssmouq6gamingofficialyt you figured it out yourself, welcome to the key of C flat. If you haven’t realized it yet, F sharp and G flat are also the same key.
It makes a lot more sense if you look at notes not as abstract keys that trigger a pretuned action on a keyboard but if you look at a stringed instrument such as a guitar. Then the notes take on a more physical physics based approach. You have to have the semitones because otherwise your fretboard would have empty spaces in the scale.
That’s not quite correct. If you made a guitar that only featured the frets of the major scale notes it wouldn’t have “empty spaces”, it would just have bigger spaces between the frets, much like how at the bottom of the neck the frets are more widely spaced. 🙂
@@DavidBennettPiano it would have irregular spaces then. the spaces decrease as you go up the neck by a regular amount. if you take out the black notes you'd have skipped frets where the gap was unexplained wider. The way notes happen are very mathematical. 1 octave is exactly half the string length. a 5th is 1/3, a 4th 1/4, and you can see the strings resonate (wobble) in those patterns when you fret a harmonic. ie a 5th creates 2 wobble points on the 7th fret and the 19th fret splitting the resonant wave into 3 equal distant parts, which is exactly where the length divided by 3 is.
I can tell you this as a Jazz Pianist. The keyboard would be impossible to negotiate as an improvisor of harmonically complex music if my fingers couldn't see what they were doing. My hands/ears understand music theory far more instantaneously than my brain. The fact that there is a big island of black notes and a little island of black notes forming a symmetric archipelago in a sea of white notes; it is this fact that makes it possible for all post tempered improvisors from Bach to Tatum to Bill Evans to function as improvisors.
The keyboard design (which I guess would be a "whole tone keyboard") at 01:00 has some advantages - you only need to learn two "shapes" for each type of chord (in root position) - one if the root is a white note, and one if its a black note. Same for inversions and extensions - the notes are in the same relative position for each white note root and each black note root. Someone's built one of these I bet...
This made things very clear, thank you. With regard to 12 tone equal temperament, and the impracticality of just intonation tuning on the fly for pianos, please consider talking about hermode (dynamic) tuning for synths. I see it in my digital audio workstation but don't really understand it and am curious about it.
In German B flat is just B and B is H, showcasing just how ancient and fundamental B flat is in comparison to all other flats/sharps. It literally predates a word/category of flat and just gets a normal letter.
@@_archimedes Pretty much, though B is then of course a black key unlike the other three mentioned, but given that H->C is also just a half tone, without our strict modern musical sense that may have mattered less in the olden days. In sharp it would in theory be called ais, but as the only vowel with a sharp, that doesn't really work as well spoken, so its often called b that way round anyway. The other sharp tones work better (cis, dis, fis, gis), while the other flats are called des, es, ges & as. At least that is as far as the classical piano key notes go.
I was pleased to see how long this one was in spite of how simple the question and its answer were. As usual, friendly to all levels and yet something to learn for intermediates and the advanced as well. Definitely saving this for future music lessons when the question inevitably comes up
TLDR: B# and E# exist they just sound identical to C natural and F natural so it’s pointless to have it on the piano and it would probably only be used writing music, in a complicated way to substitute a note where F natural cannot be used. Double sharps AND double flats also exist so you can write music with different specific notes while staying in the chosen key.
5:46 Hi David, could you make a video explaining what it really even means to "treat a note as the tonic"? It's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot but is never really explained. What does that mean? Starting a phrase on that note? Ending a phrase on that note? Something else? Does that note being treated as the tonic make the other notes sound fundamentally unresolved? Edit: It seems no one is really understanding my question, which I guess means I expressed it poorly. It boils down to this: "What specifically does one have to do in order to treat a specific note as the tonic as opposed to any other note in the same scale?" Notice how this question implies that I already know what modes are, or I wouldn't be asking this question in the first place. I know the whole point is that a different chord within the same scale will be resolved. What I'm asking is "what makes it resolved in the first place?" Answers such as "The tonic just means that that note is resolved," or "What determines the tonic is context," or "Hearing different modes is just something you learn after a while" are not really constructive answers as they're just rephrasing the question without actually giving any form of explanation or reason. I already know the tonic note is resolved, I'm asking what things make up the context which differentiates different modes, and I know how to instantly recognize the sound of each mode (for example I'm the guy who brings up the dorian vamp in Light My Fire during David's stream of his favourite songs of the 60s). Nevertheless, I can't think of another reason for a specific chord being resolved within a diatonic scale other than "it's the first one your hear," so naturally a drone would ground the tonality that way. So if you wanted to write specifically in a mode, how would you ensure that you're writing in the desired mode and none of the 6 others? I appreciate anyone trying to give an answer though.
Tonic isn’t necessarily the beginning or end note (although it definitely can be.) The tonic is the tonal center of the piece. It might be used more frequently. It is also a note that offers resolution. It is the note that feels like ‘home’.
The scale degrees have names, the 1st scale degree is called the tonic. So if you look at C, C is the tonic (I) and G (the next most important note) is the Dominant (V). 1st degree - tonic. 2nd degree - supertonic. 3rd degree - mediant. 4th degree - subdominant. 5th degree - dominant. 6th degree - submediant. 7th degree - leading note (or leading tone)
@@stephenshoihet2590 Also obviously know that, but what makes for example C the tonic note in C ionian rather than for example D? In other words, what makes C more resolved than D such that we're not in D dorian, or any other note such that we're not in their respective modes?
@@althealligator1467 I don't assume anything is obvious to anyone. The same thing that makes C ionian different from A Aeolian: context. They're all the same scale, you just hear them differently; that's why it's helpful to practice modes with a drone. th-cam.com/video/l7w402O4L8k/w-d-xo.html
Also nice noting that besides having the major scale in the white notes, a cool side effect is having the pentatonic scale in the black ones, which makes them even easier for simple melodies Best cheat code in the piano
Nothing I like better than saying to someone who “only knows how to use the white notes”, “how about only using the black ones instead?” It’s so much spicier, and also more flexible in terms of shifting the tonic position without changing the actual pool of notes. Definitely much more expressive for someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
The answer I heard growing up was 'it just is'. The answer I attempted to give teaching college music theory was 'ok, it's complicated and very Western-centric, but . ...' The real answer is: well, we string players know that keyboards are built out of tune, but when we have to play it their way, we do. 😊
10:47 (G-flat and B) is a Perfect-4th interval by semitones but would be a 3rd interval if written without accidentals (G & B). But it sure seemed weird calling it a 4th when on-screen it looked like a 3rd, and is a 3rd if going only by the named notes (G and B). 😀
Thanks David. Excellent video. As a guitar player, I am always frustrated by the keyboard layout because The key of C is easy, but every other key is complicated. If they changed the names, and had an equal number of white and black keys, as you pointed out, keyboardists would only need to learn two major scales (one staring on a black key and one starting on a white key). Every scale would be as simple as learning two types. However, it would require an entirely different way of writing sheet music!
Funnily enough, I always struggled with the same-shapedness of guitar when trying to learn the fundamentals. Mainly because remembering which notes to skip making sharp or that was counterintuitive on continuous strings. I’d often start chords on the wrong fret and then have to move up or down by one or two semitones to get it right, and that was really frustrating. Learning each shape-cluster on keys, with B#=C physically encoded, made it easier for me to back-port it onto strings once I’d internalised those patterns. This mainly affected chords, I could happily belt out melodies on guitar before I got right-into chords on keys. I’m sure I could’ve internalised the note order with enough drilling, but especially since I started on wind instruments where fingering one note and pressing the flat or sharp key is absolutely possible on B and C, you just do then end up with the same tone at the end of it with all the mechanical interlocks. (Unless the intonation is a bit wack, just like how bad guitar intonation affects tuning by fourths.) So I’d never had to rote-learn that because, again, the physicality of the instrument just did that for me. You quickly learn all the fingerings that are “identical” and just play whatever’s the most convenient for the piece, but that still doesn’t really require the same mental model of note names. Heck, after my first few months on wind I’d stopped thinking of note names at all, and just associated notation with fingering - which makes sense because that’s literally how transposing instruments are designed to be thought-about. You get used to the same fingering being written the same way but sounding different on a differently tuned horn/pipe/flute. Kinda like a capo, but with just-intonation rather than 12TET. It’s funny, thanks to Bb and Eb being the most common tunings of wind and brass, as well as clarinets having a key to raise by a twelfth, fourths sound almost as equivalent to my ear as octaves do. Not quite, but close. Thirds and fifths sound very “far away” but fourths are “right next” to a note. But hey that’s also useful for tuning most string instruments.
Fun fact: the chromatic button accordion uses three rows with each row a half step higher than the button one row below. You only have to learn three ways of playing major scales (even less if you use the additional help rows). Finger wise, on such an accordion, playing in F# is not different than playing in C.
Fun fact 2: there was an alternative Jankó keyboard layout with an arrangement of the similar to the keys you describe. Unfortunately(?) it almost died out.
The purpose of the B sharp is to tell you what chord it is... If the third is raised, then the chords' purpose is to be a dominant chord leading to somewhere like the minor scale of that key signature, eg G# is chord V of C# minor. It provides more info so that you can simplify those three notes into one chord idea.
You could also say that the most important scale in Western music is Gb major pentatonic and the white keys just cover the gaps between the notes of that scale
Thanks for revising the video. Still not clear why the white notes on the piano are the C major scale rather than calling it the A major scale, as A is the first letter of the alphabet?
Maybe it's my programmer brain, but I still think that a "mess of accidentals" is so much easier to process than having to analyze and process the note and remember if it should be flat, natural, or sharp based on previous context. If every out of key note had the accidental it would be consistent and require much less thought while sight reading.
It is a question of context. In C# major or minor, the leading note is B#. However, in D flat major, the leading note is C. (D flat minor would need double flats, so is never used.) You can always write in advisory accidentals above the note. I do this all the time. I believe that accidentals applying to the whole bar is relatively modern, so be prepared to different conventions when looking original sources of earlier music.
JD, If you think of a "bar" or "measure" as being the equivalent of a "scope" in programming", it should all make sense. If you define a variable at class scope in Java, that definition is assumed by all the methods in the class -- unless that is overridden by another definition within the method itself, in which case that new definition applies throughout the method. If you have a key signature that says F means F#, then that "definition" is assumed by all the measures in the piece -- unless another accidental "redefines" that, say, F means F natural in this measure, in which case that new declaration applies throughout the measure. In each case, the most local "definition" is the one that applies.
It's strange because if you follow the harmonic series (which is our sense of harmony is largely based off of), you encounter a note very close to a minor 7th (Bb in C) at the 7th harmonic, but don't encounter the major 7th (B in C) until the 15th harmonic, so it seems weird that the major scale would have been established as the defacto scale to start with. Why not mixolydian?
Just had a thought: at the time the letters were being assigned, obviously aeolian was more prominent, and I have read that ionian (major) was one of the rarer modes back in the day, so perhaps mixolydian was a more common major mode originally, but would have been G (sticking to main notes). But then why add Bb if you can just transpose to G to avoid tritone?
I noticed that tritones have two leading tones depending on key signature. For instance B-F could either lead to the finale of C major or Gb major. Try it.
Hey, love the channel and vids. I thought it would be interesting if you could maybe do a video on Neapolitan Chords and Augmented 6th chords and how they were popular in western classical music but haven't really translated into the modern music world. It would also be cool to see examples of songs that do feature them, I know Leonard Cohens 'everybody knows' has a Neapolitan chord in it as well as The Warnings 'EVOLVE'.
Because, thing that you know a "C" , is actually, historically "Do", read en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ut_queant_laxis . How the hell Do became C in western music , and why noone called Do an A ? I was not able to find the answer on this question . 😢 Music theory sucks before 1900th , everybody were going his own way and reinvented the wheel as much as possible.
An interesting argument based on perfect intervals that sort of glosses over the fact that the temperament - woops! (12:24) I started typing too soon... But the issue of using b sharp is not only because it simplifies writing the accidentals within a measure, it also ensures that every scale/key signature includes one of every note (A,B,C,D,E,F,G) in the written scale even at the notational expense of now requiring double sharps and double flats on occasion. Very well done!
Example: F# major-each of the following scale progressions sound the same, but which looks better? F#, G#, A#, B, C#, D#, F or F#, G#, A#, B, C#, D#, E#
I visited Metropolis Studios with my uni, this promising songwriter improvised a absolutely beautiful piece. She said, listen what happens when you restrict yourself to the black keys.
I play saxophones, and they’re not tuned to “Concert Pitch” like a piano. Bass, Tenor, and Soprano Saxes play in Bb. In other words if you play the note called “C” on any of those horns, you get a Bb on a piano. Baritone, Alto, and Sopranino play in Eb. A “C” on any of those horns will play an Eb on the piano. If you start at the lowest-pitched sax (Bass) and go through them in order from lowest horn to highest horn, the order of the horns I’d Bass, Baritone, Tenor, Alto, Soprano and Sopranino. The keys they play in go like this: Bb, Eb, Bb, Eb, Bb, Eb. Brass instruments (Trumpets, Tubas and like that… well, they have their own story). Remember that most saxes you see, though they’re made of brass, are considered to be WOODWINDS!. Why? You must clamp a bamboo reed on a sax [The reed is what produces the initial vibration that the horn turns into notes] and reed horns are considered to be woodwinds). The weird Saxophone is the “C Melody” sax. It DOES play the notes with the same pitches on a piano, having the same names on those notes. If you’re thoroughly confused, my work is done.
There were even places where the regular B was intonated lower. In Germany still today, the “B“ referes to a Bb, while the B natural is actually seen as the adjusted note (and hence got the next letter in the alphabet: “H“, which in script looks a lot like a # … and then consider were the “flat sign“ b comes from…). It‘s a very interesting history, thanks for providing a glimpse of it in this video.
Thank you for the nice explanation. We "see" these semitones as "black" or "white" only if we have previously seen a keyboard. On any other instrument, they are merely a semitone away from each other. I wonder if anyone has ever learnt to play a non' keyboard instrument without ever being exposed to a piano. An interesting speculation. I "think" in black or white notes, although I have played the trumpet and guitar in the past. Curious, isn't it?
Very interesting, and perfect timing for me! Precisely in these days I am studying about brass winds, to be able to write a solo for a song I am working on with a friend.
5:11 - I'm writing a song in L minor. For those who aren't aware, higher letters in the alphabet are used to describe super-low guitar tunings. "What's that tuned to, dropped L?"
Actually -- I believe (as does nuberiffic) that the basis for western music and modern keyboards was initially based on the A natural minor scale (Aeolian mode). One question I'm asked by my piano students that's related to this is: why does "the major scale" start with C instead of A? I believe the answer is that the major scale series of whole and half steps is but one of seven modes available from the 7 natural notes. I think you covered it fairly well. The best answer I've come upon is that: 1. music was around for quite some time before keyboards were in existence. 2. in accordance with church decrees at that time, " ... music for use at Mass ... must be truly ecclesiastical in style, grave and devout in character." * 3. the Aeolian (minor) mode ( " ... grave and devout in character" ) was a prevalent mode in use at the time keyboards were coming into existence 4. the Aeolian mode is represented on the keyboard by all the natural keys, therefore beginning with A. * excerpted from christianstudylibrary article: church-music-throughout-ages ... Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) complained that "modern church music is so constructed that the congregation cannot hear one distinct word." Not only was this a complaint against the use of the Latin when the people could not understand it. Erasmus was also criticizing how, in much of the church music of his day, the text was being sacrificed to the tune, the instrumental was crowding out the verbal. About a century and a half later, an official papal pronouncement declared that "all music for use at Mass ... must be truly ecclesiastical in style, grave and devout in character." The pope at that time forbade anyone "to sing with a solo voice, whether high or low, a hymn ... in whole or in large part." He also decreed that during Lent the playing of the organ was altogether prohibited (presumably to add more solemnity to that holy season). Evidently these restrictions were not sufficient to ensure "grave and devout" worship, because a hundred years later Pope Benedict XIV declared that "ecclesiastical music must be composed in a style which differs from that of the theatre. The solo, the duet, the trio, are forbidden." While the organ was "acceptable" and stringed instruments "tolerated," the "forbidden instruments included timpani, trumpets, oboes, flutes, mandolins" and "in general, all instruments which are theatrical in character." Another century passed and the Roman Catholic list of the forbidden included "long introductions or preludes," "brilliant pieces which are distracting," and "rapid and restless [instrumental] movements ... when the words express joy and exultation." Monetary fines were levied against violators found on the organ bench or in the choir loft and, after a third offense, such musicians would be dismissed. /// The earliest keyboard instruments were a type of organ (3rd century BC - hydraulis), and their keyboards were not chromatic (did not need to be). The seven modes available from the naturals are each a combination of whole steps and half steps. While singing in any mode starting on any note is easy enough, to do that on a keyboard requires adding the missing half steps. Apparently they were added to keyboards gradually -- according to Britannica -- starting with Bb around the 10th century, followed by F#, and eventually all 5 sharps/flats by the early 1400's -- the earlest documented chromatic keyboard being a pipe organ at Halberstadt cathedral in 1361. This fills in all the missing half steps in the 7-note natural scale and makes it possible for any mode to be sung/played beginning on any pitch -- in addition to further chromatic enrichment of both melody and harmony. Then there are the attending issues of temperament (which still exist today), with some organs (and harpsichords in early music ensembles) being tuned in temperaments other than even/equal temperament (meantone, Werckmeister, etc.). Digital organs typically have several temperaments available to choose from. Nicola Vicentino’s Arciorgano from around 1560 had 36 keys per octave (there was also an archicembalo the same keyboard design). The white keys are the same as in a conventional keyboard. The black keys are split in two parts; the parts closest to the player are the sharp alteration, the back is the flat section, with the exception of D-sharp and E-flat, and A-sharp and B-flat. The lower manual has 19 keys in quarter-comma meantone with split black keys; the upper manual is the same, but without E-sharp and B-sharp, and tuned a quarter comma higher. The two manuals playing at different pitches, gives 36 individual pitches per octave.
I know not a lot about music , the furthest I got was the recorder at school and the basic theory which no-one ever really explained the basis of so this is fascinating - as an engineer however I’m also curious to understand the actual frequencies that define each note - I have seen these on a guitar tuner (very early days of self teaching) but reading music is like learning a new language for me - thanks though 👍
In the most common, modern system A = 440 Hz, every octave is a frequency doubling. Each semitone is a twelfth root of two ratio from its neighbors. The twelfth root of 2 multiplied together 12 times is 2 (octave). Historical intervals equating to semitone intervals of 12, 7, 5, 4 are reaaaaaaallly close to small ratios 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, 5:4 which is why they sound so consonant, their beat frequency is closer to the average note frequencies.
Another major reason we would spell the note in question in the Moonlight Sonata as B# is because we find ourselves in C# minor in this moment and we can’t have two C’s in any diatonic scale. The B# is functioning as the leading tone in this example. The leading tone is maybe the most important part of the polarizing V-I chord progression in western music. Just my two cents. Thanks for a great and informative video!
I don't know if some one already mentioned this BUT First the video is great and IMHO has a lot of excellent information and it's well organized like many others in this channel. That said , actually the absence of the "visual" black keys between B and C, E and F, is because the traditional keyboard establish almost 700 years ago isn't isomorphic in isomorphic layouts like Janko, there is no "visual" gap. Another point I would made is, it's not that traditional keyboard form "western music" is C based. Major mode became mainstream much later around XV or XVI centuries. The base reference was de Aeolian mode and it's why A is called A, it was the first note indeed. Since mid of XIV, this layout was established and haven't changed so far although other isomorphic proposals were developed but hasn't been greatly accepted. Tradition is hard to change specially if you learned the hard way and are lazy or envy to teach the new generation a better system that he/she haven't had a chance. Human beens! if I had to suffer you will have to suffer as well and manufactures will say "amem" for the sake of their business !!
What I’m interested in figuring out is why the months of the standard calendar have the same pattern as the keys of the chromatic [piano] scale starting on F: the months alternate between one containing 31 days and one containing less than 31 days *except* for the long-month pairs July/Aug (at the 7th and 8th positions) and Dec/Jan (at the 12th and “13th” position, where the pattern repeats), just as the keys starting on F alternate between white keys and black keys *except* for the white-key pairs B/C (at the 7th and 8th positions) and E/F (at the 12th and “13th” position, where the pattern repeats). Given that there are any number of other possible arrangements/patterns, this seems too weird to be coincidence!
I'd like to see this go deeper into why the spacing is tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone. Why did our forefathers choose those 8 notes? My understanding is that it's the mathematical ratios between the notes that's important, and it's nice clean/simple ratios that drive 'pleasant' sounds. To get a perfect octave up, from C1 to C2 for example, you simply double the frequency (2:1 ratio). To go from a C to a G (perfect 5th), the ratio is 3:2. We could stop here, as that's really all you need to calculate the other notes, however, let's continue. C to F (4th) gives a ratio close to 4:3. A major 3rd from C to an E, near enough 5:4. A minor third, C to D#, which is close to 6:5. The nice(ish) mathematical ratios here translate to intervals that sound quite nice to most ears. The tritone corresponds to a ratio of 45:32 (or 64:45), which is quite a complex ratio, and is reflected in how jarring the interval sounds. To get from some of the simple ratios described above to a wider set of notes was likely based on following the chain of notes that could be reached from those simple ratios. eg. the circle of 5ths (starting at F and following all the 3:2 ratios upwards) will eventually get you around the full 7 notes (and the flats/sharps too, albeit across octaves). If you follow the 3:2 ratio across octaves you'll notice that the notes don't quite line up (to get notes to line up across octaves, the ratio needed would actually be ~2.9966:2 instead of 3:2). The equal-temperament 12-tone scale (where each note's frequency is the previous note's frequency multiplied by 2^(1/12) ) provides a nice-enough approximation of all of these ratios in the 12 equally spaced notes, and has the added benefit that octaves line up exactly.
I suppose another reason for adding additional sharps and flats after B-flat and E-flat was so that you could transpose a given modal scale up or down to suit the range of your singers. The more fundamental question is why does Western music use the particular pattern of tones and semitones that makes up the diatonic scale and its modes, rather than e.g. a pentatonic or chromatic scale?
Having gaps at least gives some very quick visual indication --- eg. land marks. Very quick and convenient visual indication - without needing to use colours, which probably wouldn't be as convenient - even though people probably could get used to it.
OK. But why did the labeling start 3 letters in at a "C" Major instead of just beginning with "A"? (more about naming than theory). Like couldn't the C major scale just as easily been called the A major, and the first semitone have been the creation of a Gb? In such case there'd be no semitone after notes C and G, like: A, A#/Bb, B, B#/Cb, C, D, D#/Eb, E, E#/Fb, F, F#/Gb, G. So why was it a "C" major scale?
Did you/could you do something that ties into this, which is how the circle of fifths F-C-G.....E-B ties into the notes that make up the church modes, and why it stops where it does? (My guess is that it's to avoid having 3 consecutive semitones in the "scale," much like the pentatonic scale follows a circle of fifths until it would create a semitone.)
Another wonderful video! Maybe sometime you can address how alternative keyboards (such as those used by chromatic accordions) can, in some ways, address the inconsistent layout of piano keys. I play piano and piano accordion, but have been told that starting with a chromatic keyboard layout can be much easier to learn to play, visualize, etc. Glad I subscribed!
Look at it this way: If one can easily “bend” a note on a stringed instrument (other than, say, a piano) or on a woodwind, why shouldn’t one be able to “bend” music theory once in a while?
📌This video is a revised re-upload. I originally uploaded this video in April 2022, but soon realised from the reaction in the comments that I had skimmed over a lot of detail when it came to the major scale and the tones and semitones. This was causing confusion for many viewers so I've now decided to replace that video with this new, updated version. I'm much happier with the explaination in this video. Sorry again for any confusion caused by the original edition. You can still view the original version if you like here: th-cam.com/video/r7aQQQsvxho/w-d-xo.html
You are an angel. You are aq good teacher who has helped me enormously. Bless you.
Where did the western scale come from I mean why was is the way it was. Is it something to do with nature or totally random?
@@thesuncollective1475 That is a really complicated question that would need a large book to answer it. Very briefly, we find musical intervals that have simple integer ratios consonant, However if these 'pure' intervals are stacked, things go slightly out of tune. Stacking twelve perfect fifths and then coming down seven octaves to what should be the original starting note gives a different pitch. (Look up Pythagorean Comma and Syntonic Comma for more information.) More formally, the octave is a doubling of frequency and any equal division will involve roots of two, which are irrational numbers. This means that they cannot be expressed as integer ratios - i.e. as pure musical intervals. The whole history of music everywhere in the world has been profoundly influenced by this.
@@chrisisbell3080 Thank you..Maths , Frequencies doubling its very cosmic stuff, I will have to go on a quest I feel to get to the bottom of it. Thanks. As a side note its interesting that Allan Holdsworth came up with his own math based system. I'm inclined to say he was right as it was much simpler. He realised, perhaps, a system which has ten ways of naming one chord is a weak and over complicated system !
@@arcadepiano I see when you use your special keyboard, you produce many typos.
The bigger question is why did they start with "C". Why not have the white key major scale start with "A". That would make more sense....
I wondered the same thing
Iirc, the "standard" mode was the aeolian, aka, the minor scale. And since they used to use the white keys, that's why they actually start in A, not in C
As he notes in the video, vocal music and lettered notes existed before the piano was invented. They chose to start the piano with C because it made sense at the time. Our current music system wasn't something which someone just sat down and wrote one day, it was an evolution over time with many different people and changes.
For all the people who have ever wondered: if you actually want to know the reason why in more depth, the internet is full of music history and answers about scales, modes and how our current western music system evolved. If you ever say "i wondered why" about anything and you don't go find the answer, then it really wasn't that important to you.
That is a question I will be explaining in a future video!
@@stephenshoihet2590 I always wondered why we exist. But i never found the answer in the internet. I wonder why. 😎
Jokes aside. Your argument was sound enough in my opinion and i did like the small barb at the end. A much more interesting argument now that we are in this info overloaded/over-bloated reality.
Our choir learned to sing quartertones, bright or dark for each chord.
This is extremely tough and takes a lot of practice and a great ear.
But the effect is impressive
Why have I been calling it “half a semitone” instead of “quartertone” 😅 I love using them
B-half-# tho
As someone who is just recently starting to learn the keyboard, the layout actually really helped me memorize the notes. I tinker around in E Major a lot and so I always know where E is, two keys to the left of the group of three black keys. The slight variance on the pattern with black keys is just enough to give every note it’s own little distinctive spot, regardless of what octave you’re in. (Which is also easy to tell just by looking at that pattern)
If it were a perfectly symmetrical layout, either with those black keys added in or with just white keys, it’d be a lot harder to tell where you’re at, especially as a beginner. But as is, it’s akin to having little landmarks to go off of when you’re getting directions.
Seems like it wasn’t even done purposefully but when I realized how much it was helping me I began to really appreciate the design of modern keyboards.
It wasn't until I started singing choir music that I really appreciated how the voice is the instrument standard notation is optimized for. It really makes it easy to sight-sing major, minor and modal music.
As a guitarist, I think showing the guitar fretboard would help illuminate this question. The keyboard-oriented labelling of the Major scale obscures the fact that It is blindingly obvious on a fretboard that there just isn't a semitone between B & C, and between E & F.
At age 15 or so in the mid-Sixties I taught myself to play guitar by ear and with tablature and never learned to read sheet music. To me, the question initially appeared the other way around: "Why have these musical theorists assigned letters to some notes on the fretboard, but not others?"
exactly
You're just miffed that the age of guitar-based pop has ended and we are back to keyboards. Ha!
@@Leftatalbuquerque So why are some of my faves New Order, Fatboy Slim, Bodyrockers, Alice Deejay, and on and on?
It's not a matter of taste, it's a matter of utility. On a fretboard all the notes are equal, no black or white, key changes are easy.
@@LeftatalbuquerqueDumb comment
Because your guitar is built for most general and latest music. This however doesn't explain to you in any way, shape or form, why we use 12 temperaments and not 53. Or with equal 19 temperaments, 63hz steps.
Writing B sharp also preserves the chord (or melody) shape on the staff, making it easier to read and remember once you get to the point you're reading several bars ahead of where you're playing.
Especially in certain keys where it's neater to write a minor second interval chord using B sharp, E sharp, C flat or F flat than it is to write a unison and present a confusion over which note gets the accidental.
I think this is probably why I've always been particularly confused on the use of B sharp. Despite playing music all my life and playing in the school band every single year, unlike my fellow students I was never able to sight-read, so any aspect of notation meant to help with sight-reading would just go right over my head because I'm not even able to read several measures ahead, so keeping the shape to make sight-reading easier just serves no purpose to me since I can't take advantage of it.
I was, however, very good at memorizing the music, so despite having to spend hours handwriting my own notation of my own invention on the sheet to make it easier for me to learn, I was usually the first one to learn the piece to the point of no longer needing sheet music at all.
What an incredibly easy way to understand what you said, well done! This has been explained to me over and over, but because I have so little understanding of music and music theory, I never understood any of this. I'll have to go through this a couple of times, because you showed me things I didn't know that I didn't know.
The question that sticks in my mind is how the seven notes in the scale even got to be in the first place. Going by perfect intervals, a 12-tone system emerges clear as day, but I've always wondered why the white notes begin and end where they do on the circle of fifths.
That's a good question. I assume it's because it's just the scale you get by stacking perfect fifths until you get two consecutive semitones:
F-C-G-D-A-E-B
then you'd have F#, but then you'd get F, G, and F#, which I guess they found too dissonant together (they obviously wouldn't have had the names yet).
My question has always been what does it even mean to "treat a different note as the tonic"? It's a phrase that's constantly thrown around yet never actually explained. The implication has always been that if one note is treated as the tonic, the chord built on that note will be resolved and chords built on other notes will not. But why?
I personally have a completely different theory of what makes a mode resolved, the biggest difference being that tonality revolves around intervals and not individual notes, and "treating a chord as the tonic" pretty much boils down to that chord being the first you hear. What determines tonality beyond that is the relationship of a tritone resolving to a major third, and so tonality can very quickly become ambiguous, two major thirds being resolved at once.
This probably doesn't sound like much like that but I can explain it more in depth if you want.
I see the circle of fifths as a 360° section of an infinite spiral of fifths.
One day it struck me that the circle of fifths starts with the tonal note of the brightest mode and ends witht the darkest, for the white keys for example, it goes F C G D A E B- thats the tonal notes of lydian, major, mixolydian, dorian, minor, phrygian, locrian, which is all the modes in order of brightness
What i do NOT understand is what makes a note the tonal
There are two explanations I can think of, based on how you construct your scale. I'll call these the "Pythagorean method" and the "Tetrachord method".
In the *Pythagorean method*, you build a scale by stacking perfect fifths (a 3:2 frequency ratio) and wrapping around at the octave. With just one perfect fifth, your smallest interval is the 4:3 perfect fourth (what's left over between your fifth and the octave). If you add another perfect fifth, you end up with a new smallest interval: a 9:8 ratio, the whole tone. You can keep adding perfect fifths and that will stay the smallest interval until you max out at 5 distinct notes, and you've built a major pentatonic. As soon as you add a sixth perfect fifth, you introduce a new smallest interval, the diatonic semitone. This time you can fit in just one more perfect fifth before introducing an even smaller interval, the chromatic semitone, giving a diatonic scale (specifically, what we now call the Lydian). Then you can get up to 12 notes in your scale before finding something smaller than a chromatic semitone. So this method, stacking as many perfect fifths as you can for a given smallest interval, produces a natural sequence of (IIRC) 2, 5, 7, 12, 19, 31, and 53-note scales. Technically you can go higher but the smallest interval in a 53-tone scale is so tiny that it's almost imperceptible.
(I should point out that twelve perfect fifths doesn't exactly complete the octave if they're tuned pure--no stack of fifths will ever reach an octave equivalent of the starting note--so strictly speaking the 12-tone chromatic scale is a no more natural stopping point than 19. It's just the one that the West settled on, mostly for convenience)
The *Terachord method* is how the ancient Greeks conceived of scales (or "octave species"). An octave would be split into two perfect fourths plus a leftover tone. The perfect fourths were then filled in with two more notes to produce a four-tone subscale called a tetrachord, with both terachords following the same pattern. If the largest interval between adjacent tones in the tetrachord was a whole tone, the species was diatonic; if the largest interval was a minor third (meaning the rest was split into two semitones), it was chromatic; and if the largest interval was a "ditone" or major third (meaning the remainder was split into quarter tones), it was an enharmonic species. So really, all ancient Greek scales were in theory heptatonic, even their chromatic scales.
@@gwalla Here is a quote from a random internet text, so the source is not that great but the idea still remains and can help in following better research:
"... The Gregorian modes, also known as the church modes, were developed from earlier musical traditions and sources, particularly in the medieval period. The modes are a system of organizing musical pitches that were used extensively in Western European sacred music from the 9th to the 16th centuries.
The origins of the Gregorian modes can be traced back to ancient Greek music theory, which classified melodies based on different tonal systems known as tetrachords. These tetrachords were combinations of four pitches that formed the basis of scales. The Greeks had established several different tetrachord structures, which later influenced the development of the Gregorian modes.
During the early Christian period, as the Gregorian chant was evolving, the early church musicians adapted the existing musical practices and theories to suit the needs of liturgical music. They incorporated elements from both Jewish and Byzantine music traditions. The modes provided a framework for composing and performing chant melodies that conveyed different moods and spiritual significance.
The Gregorian modes were originally developed as eight distinct scales, each with its own characteristic pattern of whole and half steps. These modes were named after the ancient Greek regions: Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Hypodorian, Hypophrygian, Hypolydian, and Hypomixolydian. Later, two additional modes were added, making a total of twelve modes, which included Ionian and Aeolian.
The modes were primarily used in monophonic chant compositions, such as Gregorian chant, where a single melody line was sung without accompanying harmony. Each mode had its own unique melodic characteristics and emotional qualities, and they were associated with specific liturgical texts and occasions.
Over time, the system of Gregorian modes became an essential part of Western musical tradition and influenced the development of later music theory, including the major and minor scales that are widely used in Western music today."
I think a better explanation for having B# is harmony and scales. The chord G#B#D# is just the V chord of C# Major. If you notate it with C natural, then it would be understood as a different chord for a funcional point of view. In a sense, this is all done so that C# Major doesn't have any repeated note names (C and C#) so that the structure of the major scale is kept.
yeah, his explaination was bizarre. like it made sense but its not the primary reason and I've never heard anybody make that point
The original explanation made a lot of sense to me and answered a lot of questions I had about basic music theory. Your explanation doesn't make any sense to me because I don't know what you mean by "V chord of C# major."
I've watched lots of music theory videos trying to get a basic understanding of how scales and modes work, but everything until this video went in one ear and out the other because everyone seems to expect the viewer to have some prior knowledge of music theory. Starting with a history lesson from the beginning of Western music finally made something click for me.
@@CaesarSneezy i'm glad you understand his explanation. That still doesn't mean that the accidental thing is the main reason. In fact, having to write more accidentals is a side effect of the reason I've commented, because you would normally use the chords of your scale, while accidentals often don't belong in the scale. In fact, if you don't write tontal music i.e. if you write music that is not based on tonalities, you may end up writing more sharps than naturals if you use B# instead of C.
@@CaesarSneezy at a very basic level C# Major is a set of notes that start in C# and the distance between them is the same as in C Major (the tone tone semiton tone tone tone semitone explained in the video). So it is a scale that sounds as "good" and has a similar "bright" quality as C Major but with other set of notes. This means that we have all the notes of C sharped: C#, D#, E# F#, G#, A#, B#. If you rename E# to F and B# to C the relation between C Major and C# Major would be less obvious.
The letter V is also the roman numeral 5, so in music theory the V chord is just the fifth chord of the scale. We started the scale from C# so the fifth note is G#. You may or may not know that chords in western music are typically structure by thirds and by default contain 3 notes. Taking that into account the V chord of C# Major is G# B# D#. If you write C instead of B# you don't have a third from G# because the way intervals are named is by counting how many differently named notes are in between: G A B C are 4 notes, so it would be a fourth. More precisely a diminished fourth, not a perfect fourth like ones in the video, because effectively it is as small as a major third (2 tones). So from the point of view of writing chords and harmony this is fucked up. There's much more depth to this, but I think I've already said a lot.
I think the note layout actually comes from the minor scale, not the major.
A lot of plain chant was done in minor and our notation system comes from notating plain chant.
It would also make sense to start your scale on A, not C.
You forget many keyboards were made in Italy, where the notation system starts at Do.
@@bacicinvatteneaca the major scale starts on Do.
The minor scale starts on La, and they chose that to be A.
Your point doesn't contradict mine.
Probably they just took C Major and A minor since they share the same notes and they are all natural
@@carljohnson9474 ...no dude.
I don't think you understand my comment at all
@@nuberiffic I think I did, but tell me what I could have misunderstood
Thank you, David. This is the first time someone has explained MODES in a brief way that actually makes sense.
About why we use C# or Cb. As I learned it‘s not only to avoid more accidentals. It‘s also to make intervals easier to read. If I‘m in the key of G#, a G# triad would be G# - B# - D#. The intervals still look like thirds in sheet music (like a G major triad). Would I use C, that chord would look like a suspended chord at first glance: G# - C - D#. It wouldn‘t resemlbe the familar triad structure we know from sheet music. So adding that C# actually makes the intervals and the chord easier to read.
10:44 Calling B a perfect fourth above g-flat is convenient but also troubling. It quickly drives home the fact we don't need a black key, but writing B above g-flat LOOKS like a third of some type (in this case an augmented third), whether it's on the staff or we look at the letter names. Yes, an augmented third does have the same semitone distance as a perfect fourth (when we're using equal temperament) but we really should write the enharmonic equivalent (c-flat) rather than B when describing a perfect fourth above g-flat.
It's in the aesthetics of how the piece looks. Accidentals consistent with the key signature (excepting C major/A minor where you pick one and stick with it) along with as few in the bar as possible are the unspoken rules of thumb hence why key signatures even exist.
It's also not even true. If using just intonated fifths, Cb is 23 cents (0.23 semitones) lower than B. It's only 12-tone equal temperament that identifies those two notes, and that was not the standard until centuries later.
I'd love to live in a world where this was troubling. LOL
Yes, but the G flat can ve written as F sharp and all is well in the world
David, I just discovered your channel And I am highly impressed at how informative and educational your videos are!
Thanks for the video.
History is always so important to put things in perspective and help us get the actual meaning of things. Everything is always in a context.
That is so much of the part that many people miss. They expect "theory" to explain all the whys and wherefores of our current western system, as if someone just sat down and created it all at once... but it was an evolution over hundreds of years with many different people and the way music is thought about has changed with time and culture too.
So many beginners get themselves wrapped up in those questions and the best thing to do is just forget it, learn things because they "just are" and later when you have a solid understanding of the basics, come back to fill in the gaps. Adults do the same thing when trying to learn a second language (esp native English speakers) why is a dress masculine in Spanish when a woman wears it? Doesn't matter, it just is, learn it.
A big reason children learn things more easily is they don't burden themselves with rules, they just repeat things until they know them. Adults think rules are some kind of shortcut to understanding something and it usually isn't. Why does something fall when I drop it? Gravity. How does gravity work? Nobody knows and I don't care; I just don't drop things that will break 😝
Imagine how confusing the piano would be if the black and white keys were evenly distributed. The black key that was once an F# in one octave, would now be the G# key in the next octave
Idk I think it would be the same as the guitar, violin, flute,... comes down to muscle memory, no matter how conplicated our brain somehow can do it. :)
That is not true. Look at the diagram at 0:58. C# is always the same number of of keys away from say A. It is just that octaves are represented more compactly. You can't see two F#s on that diagram, but if you could, they would be evenly spaced.
I think you're forgetting that if there were black keys between B/C and E/F, then an "octave" wouldn't be 12 intervals away, but 14
@@nates2 Exactly
It wouldn't be confusing guitars aren't confusing. It would just be different.
David, you are sent from God to explain to us non musical all the questions that confused us in primary school.
🤩🤩🤩
Sorry, but you have to know music theory to understand his explanation. This was mumbo jumbo to me.
@@freddyrosenberg9288 was it really?? I don't think so
@@boghundI've been playing guitar for 20 years and I still don't get it! 😂
If you think he was senf by god, they your primary school failed you twice.
Just one comment: The more important reason why to use a B-sharp in the Moonglight Sonata example rather than to avoid a "mass of accidentals" by alternating C-sharp and C-natural comes from harmony: the dominant chord in C-sharp harmonic minor key HAS TO BE a G-sharp major chord (G-sharp B-sharp D-sharp) in order to keep the logical major triad shape of the chord.
well put and explained. B# and E# exist in certain keys when speaking diatonically just like Cb and Fb exist in other keys.
@sebass8292 actually F flat is nowhere in any key
@sebass8292 other than the key just being C flat major instead of B major
But for all intent and purposes...
@@bvssmouq6gamingofficialyt you figured it out yourself, welcome to the key of C flat. If you haven’t realized it yet, F sharp and G flat are also the same key.
I already knew the answer as to why, but I watched your video anyway because I always enjoy your channel. Keep it up!
❤️❤️
It makes a lot more sense if you look at notes not as abstract keys that trigger a pretuned action on a keyboard but if you look at a stringed instrument such as a guitar. Then the notes take on a more physical physics based approach. You have to have the semitones because otherwise your fretboard would have empty spaces in the scale.
That’s not quite correct. If you made a guitar that only featured the frets of the major scale notes it wouldn’t have “empty spaces”, it would just have bigger spaces between the frets, much like how at the bottom of the neck the frets are more widely spaced. 🙂
@@DavidBennettPiano it would have irregular spaces then. the spaces decrease as you go up the neck by a regular amount. if you take out the black notes you'd have skipped frets where the gap was unexplained wider. The way notes happen are very mathematical. 1 octave is exactly half the string length. a 5th is 1/3, a 4th 1/4, and you can see the strings resonate (wobble) in those patterns when you fret a harmonic. ie a 5th creates 2 wobble points on the 7th fret and the 19th fret splitting the resonant wave into 3 equal distant parts, which is exactly where the length divided by 3 is.
@@failsaferecords4401 I see what you mean 😊
@@DavidBennettPiano correct. Look at the fret layout of the dulcimer.
Wow. What an incredibly informative video. I learned more music theory in 25 minutes than in a whole college class.
Teaching music theory in college would be stupid anyways, Music schools teach them quite well however
I can tell you this as a Jazz Pianist. The keyboard would be impossible to negotiate as an improvisor of harmonically complex music if my fingers couldn't see what they were doing. My hands/ears understand music theory far more instantaneously than my brain. The fact that there is a big island of black notes and a little island of black notes forming a symmetric archipelago in a sea of white notes; it is this fact that makes it possible for all post tempered improvisors from Bach to Tatum to Bill Evans to function as improvisors.
David, this was an excellent tutorial and, for me, answered questions which I struggled to even articulate. Thanks for the history and insights.
The keyboard design (which I guess would be a "whole tone keyboard") at 01:00 has some advantages - you only need to learn two "shapes" for each type of chord (in root position) - one if the root is a white note, and one if its a black note. Same for inversions and extensions - the notes are in the same relative position for each white note root and each black note root. Someone's built one of these I bet...
This made things very clear, thank you. With regard to 12 tone equal temperament, and the impracticality of just intonation tuning on the fly for pianos, please consider talking about hermode (dynamic) tuning for synths. I see it in my digital audio workstation but don't really understand it and am curious about it.
Brilliant, as always! Your videos are educational and very well explained!
I learned something important, thank you. The examples was perfect for this, it was clear to me which one was the odd one out.
In German B flat is just B and B is H, showcasing just how ancient and fundamental B flat is in comparison to all other flats/sharps. It literally predates a word/category of flat and just gets a normal letter.
Wut? It goes A - B - H - C??
@@_archimedes Pretty much, though B is then of course a black key unlike the other three mentioned, but given that H->C is also just a half tone, without our strict modern musical sense that may have mattered less in the olden days.
In sharp it would in theory be called ais, but as the only vowel with a sharp, that doesn't really work as well spoken, so its often called b that way round anyway. The other sharp tones work better (cis, dis, fis, gis), while the other flats are called des, es, ges & as. At least that is as far as the classical piano key notes go.
I was pleased to see how long this one was in spite of how simple the question and its answer were. As usual, friendly to all levels and yet something to learn for intermediates and the advanced as well. Definitely saving this for future music lessons when the question inevitably comes up
TLDR: B# and E# exist they just sound identical to C natural and F natural so it’s pointless to have it on the piano and it would probably only be used writing music, in a complicated way to substitute a note where F natural cannot be used. Double sharps AND double flats also exist so you can write music with different specific notes while staying in the chosen key.
Quite.
5:46 Hi David, could you make a video explaining what it really even means to "treat a note as the tonic"? It's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot but is never really explained. What does that mean? Starting a phrase on that note? Ending a phrase on that note? Something else? Does that note being treated as the tonic make the other notes sound fundamentally unresolved?
Edit: It seems no one is really understanding my question, which I guess means I expressed it poorly. It boils down to this: "What specifically does one have to do in order to treat a specific note as the tonic as opposed to any other note in the same scale?" Notice how this question implies that I already know what modes are, or I wouldn't be asking this question in the first place. I know the whole point is that a different chord within the same scale will be resolved. What I'm asking is "what makes it resolved in the first place?" Answers such as "The tonic just means that that note is resolved," or "What determines the tonic is context," or "Hearing different modes is just something you learn after a while" are not really constructive answers as they're just rephrasing the question without actually giving any form of explanation or reason. I already know the tonic note is resolved, I'm asking what things make up the context which differentiates different modes, and I know how to instantly recognize the sound of each mode (for example I'm the guy who brings up the dorian vamp in Light My Fire during David's stream of his favourite songs of the 60s). Nevertheless, I can't think of another reason for a specific chord being resolved within a diatonic scale other than "it's the first one your hear," so naturally a drone would ground the tonality that way. So if you wanted to write specifically in a mode, how would you ensure that you're writing in the desired mode and none of the 6 others? I appreciate anyone trying to give an answer though.
Tonic isn’t necessarily the beginning or end note (although it definitely can be.) The tonic is the tonal center of the piece. It might be used more frequently. It is also a note that offers resolution. It is the note that feels like ‘home’.
The scale degrees have names, the 1st scale degree is called the tonic. So if you look at C, C is the tonic (I) and G (the next most important note) is the Dominant (V).
1st degree - tonic.
2nd degree - supertonic.
3rd degree - mediant.
4th degree - subdominant.
5th degree - dominant.
6th degree - submediant.
7th degree - leading note (or leading tone)
@@vaporman442 I very much know that. My question is why?
@@stephenshoihet2590 Also obviously know that, but what makes for example C the tonic note in C ionian rather than for example D? In other words, what makes C more resolved than D such that we're not in D dorian, or any other note such that we're not in their respective modes?
@@althealligator1467 I don't assume anything is obvious to anyone. The same thing that makes C ionian different from A Aeolian: context. They're all the same scale, you just hear them differently; that's why it's helpful to practice modes with a drone.
th-cam.com/video/l7w402O4L8k/w-d-xo.html
Also nice noting that besides having the major scale in the white notes, a cool side effect is having the pentatonic scale in the black ones, which makes them even easier for simple melodies
Best cheat code in the piano
Nothing I like better than saying to someone who “only knows how to use the white notes”, “how about only using the black ones instead?” It’s so much spicier, and also more flexible in terms of shifting the tonic position without changing the actual pool of notes. Definitely much more expressive for someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
I swear this video was already released and I watched a few days ago. This is a super awesome historical explanation.
Yes, this video was originally released last year. I wasn’t happy with it though so this is a new updated version. I’m glad you enjoyed it 😊
@@DavidBennettPiano of course! Love the content man! Keep it up! Funny coincidence that I was just watching this video and you re-released it.
The answer I heard growing up was 'it just is'. The answer I attempted to give teaching college music theory was 'ok, it's complicated and very Western-centric, but . ...' The real answer is: well, we string players know that keyboards are built out of tune, but when we have to play it their way, we do. 😊
What does that even mean?
10:47 (G-flat and B) is a Perfect-4th interval by semitones but would be a 3rd interval if written without accidentals (G & B). But it sure seemed weird calling it a 4th when on-screen it looked like a 3rd, and is a 3rd if going only by the named notes (G and B). 😀
Thanks David. Excellent video. As a guitar player, I am always frustrated by the keyboard layout because The key of C is easy, but every other key is complicated. If they changed the names, and had an equal number of white and black keys, as you pointed out, keyboardists would only need to learn two major scales (one staring on a black key and one starting on a white key). Every scale would be as simple as learning two types. However, it would require an entirely different way of writing sheet music!
Funnily enough, I always struggled with the same-shapedness of guitar when trying to learn the fundamentals. Mainly because remembering which notes to skip making sharp or that was counterintuitive on continuous strings. I’d often start chords on the wrong fret and then have to move up or down by one or two semitones to get it right, and that was really frustrating.
Learning each shape-cluster on keys, with B#=C physically encoded, made it easier for me to back-port it onto strings once I’d internalised those patterns. This mainly affected chords, I could happily belt out melodies on guitar before I got right-into chords on keys.
I’m sure I could’ve internalised the note order with enough drilling, but especially since I started on wind instruments where fingering one note and pressing the flat or sharp key is absolutely possible on B and C, you just do then end up with the same tone at the end of it with all the mechanical interlocks. (Unless the intonation is a bit wack, just like how bad guitar intonation affects tuning by fourths.) So I’d never had to rote-learn that because, again, the physicality of the instrument just did that for me.
You quickly learn all the fingerings that are “identical” and just play whatever’s the most convenient for the piece, but that still doesn’t really require the same mental model of note names. Heck, after my first few months on wind I’d stopped thinking of note names at all, and just associated notation with fingering - which makes sense because that’s literally how transposing instruments are designed to be thought-about. You get used to the same fingering being written the same way but sounding different on a differently tuned horn/pipe/flute. Kinda like a capo, but with just-intonation rather than 12TET.
It’s funny, thanks to Bb and Eb being the most common tunings of wind and brass, as well as clarinets having a key to raise by a twelfth, fourths sound almost as equivalent to my ear as octaves do. Not quite, but close. Thirds and fifths sound very “far away” but fourths are “right next” to a note. But hey that’s also useful for tuning most string instruments.
Fun fact: the chromatic button accordion uses three rows with each row a half step higher than the button one row below. You only have to learn three ways of playing major scales (even less if you use the additional help rows). Finger wise, on such an accordion, playing in F# is not different than playing in C.
Fun fact 2: there was an alternative Jankó keyboard layout with an arrangement of the similar to the keys you describe. Unfortunately(?) it almost died out.
I found myself coming back to this video and am so glad the short explanation is dealt with right away.
Drake's gonna have to C this.
Pretty sure he's been C'ing A Minor.
@@bahmoudd Drake's favorite chord 😭💀
That grabbed my attention and kept me there till the end. Fab video and much appreciated 👍 Many thanks!
The purpose of the B sharp is to tell you what chord it is... If the third is raised, then the chords' purpose is to be a dominant chord leading to somewhere like the minor scale of that key signature, eg G# is chord V of C# minor. It provides more info so that you can simplify those three notes into one chord idea.
This is by far the best video on this topic. Even though I knew the answer to the question, it was very enlightening.
That explains everything - thank you! Even the Simpson's joke I never got...
Excellent presentation. I thought I knew a thing or two about music but much of this is new to me. Thanks!
Drake's ghostwriters should come see this😅
Great Instruction again Dave.
Wonderful Channel
I love your videos, you've helped me to understand music theory and also inspired me to want to know more, thank you.
14:35 - 15:50 - This explains a lot, best part of the whole video, thanks!
Ok, the cartoon joke at 16:05 is pretty good too!
You could also say that the most important scale in Western music is Gb major pentatonic and the white keys just cover the gaps between the notes of that scale
Lol
You could say that, yes, and be wrong
@2:25 you were totally channeling the 'Sleaford Mods' right here and it was glorious to my ears :)
Please give us the follow up to the strings orchestration video 🙏🙏
It’s coming first week of July hopefully 😊
@@DavidBennettPiano 🤩
This is brilliant...and unbelievably clear.
Thanks for revising the video. Still not clear why the white notes on the piano are the C major scale rather than calling it the A major scale, as A is the first letter of the alphabet?
That is actually the topic of an upcoming video 😊
Was thinking the same thing. Good thing I hit that bell icon 😉
@@DavidBennettPiano I'm guessing it's due to A Minor random quirk of history that doesn't have any logic to it, but got passed down as a tradition.
@@zzzaphod8507 what does A minor have to do with this?
@@iletyoucallmestevesy It's a joke! "... due to a 'minor' quirk..."
Thank you for this very informative and interesting lesson. I’ve often wondered why and how the keyboard notes were set out this way.
Maybe it's my programmer brain, but I still think that a "mess of accidentals" is so much easier to process than having to analyze and process the note and remember if it should be flat, natural, or sharp based on previous context. If every out of key note had the accidental it would be consistent and require much less thought while sight reading.
It is a question of context. In C# major or minor, the leading note is B#. However, in D flat major, the leading note is C. (D flat minor would need double flats, so is never used.)
You can always write in advisory accidentals above the note. I do this all the time. I believe that accidentals applying to the whole bar is relatively modern, so be prepared to different conventions when looking original sources of earlier music.
JD,
If you think of a "bar" or "measure" as being the equivalent of a "scope" in programming", it should all make sense.
If you define a variable at class scope in Java, that definition is assumed by all the methods in the class -- unless that is overridden by another definition within the method itself, in which case that new definition applies throughout the method.
If you have a key signature that says F means F#, then that "definition" is assumed by all the measures in the piece -- unless another accidental "redefines" that, say, F means F natural in this measure, in which case that new declaration applies throughout the measure.
In each case, the most local "definition" is the one that applies.
Best explanation so far!!!
Thank you! 🙂
I imagine having 6 notes and 6 sharps/flats and just put a coloured C everywhere so pianists can know where they are and that's it
Added sharps/flats notes starting from C for modes only;
Bb: Mixolydian Mode (b7)
Eb: Dorian Mode (b3 & b7)
Ab: Aeolian Mode (Natural Minor Scale; b3, b6 & b7)
Db: Phrygian Mode (b2, b3, b6 & b7)
Gb: Locrian Mode (b2, b3, b5, b6 & b7)
Except Lydian Mode starting from C, Only one sharp added. (#4)
I never understand why the major scale on all the whites wasn't just called A..
Why C?
He'll get to that eventually!
I'd love to see a video on this
I think like the video said because the notes came from singing and the keyboard system came after. And the A major scale has sharps
@@emilongyeah me too!
Great as always David, thanks a lot
Thanks!
It's strange because if you follow the harmonic series (which is our sense of harmony is largely based off of), you encounter a note very close to a minor 7th (Bb in C) at the 7th harmonic, but don't encounter the major 7th (B in C) until the 15th harmonic, so it seems weird that the major scale would have been established as the defacto scale to start with. Why not mixolydian?
Just had a thought: at the time the letters were being assigned, obviously aeolian was more prominent, and I have read that ionian (major) was one of the rarer modes back in the day, so perhaps mixolydian was a more common major mode originally, but would have been G (sticking to main notes). But then why add Bb if you can just transpose to G to avoid tritone?
@@atrus3823 You can't 'just transpose' because human voices have to sing the melodies. This was happening before keyboards were invented.
@@manuellayburr382 you don't need a keyboard to transpose. Just rewrite the melody in a different key and sing those notes.
I noticed that tritones have two leading tones depending on key signature. For instance B-F could either lead to the finale of C major or Gb major. Try it.
Hey, love the channel and vids. I thought it would be interesting if you could maybe do a video on Neapolitan Chords and Augmented 6th chords and how they were popular in western classical music but haven't really translated into the modern music world. It would also be cool to see examples of songs that do feature them, I know Leonard Cohens 'everybody knows' has a Neapolitan chord in it as well as The Warnings 'EVOLVE'.
Thanks for watching 😊 I’ll keep that topic in mind. I did touch on both those topics in my “Iceberg” video so check that out if you’ve not already 😊
Always showing the Bb in the lowered B starting from C results it like a Mixolydian Mode.
The more interesting question is: why is the scale on a keyboard not based on A, why C?
It’s based on the A Minor scale
Because, thing that you know a "C" , is actually, historically "Do", read en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ut_queant_laxis . How the hell Do became C in western music , and why noone called Do an A ? I was not able to find the answer on this question . 😢 Music theory sucks before 1900th , everybody were going his own way and reinvented the wheel as much as possible.
An interesting argument based on perfect intervals that sort of glosses over the fact that the temperament - woops! (12:24) I started typing too soon... But the issue of using b sharp is not only because it simplifies writing the accidentals within a measure, it also ensures that every scale/key signature includes one of every note (A,B,C,D,E,F,G) in the written scale even at the notational expense of now requiring double sharps and double flats on occasion. Very well done!
Example: F# major-each of the following scale progressions sound the same, but which looks better? F#, G#, A#, B, C#, D#, F or F#, G#, A#, B, C#, D#, E#
The black notes are also the pentatonic scale
I visited Metropolis Studios with my uni, this promising songwriter improvised a absolutely beautiful piece. She said, listen what happens when you restrict yourself to the black keys.
Thanks for the wonderful explanation. You did a good job, a big kudos for that.
finally someone explained it to me!!!
😊😊😊
The historical account given is fascinating. Thank you!
The great thing is, there is an E#, in certain keys.
Yup. The F# harmonic minor scale would be a good example of it. 🐧
@@silentgloria , mhmmm!
I play saxophones, and they’re not tuned to “Concert Pitch” like a piano. Bass, Tenor, and Soprano Saxes play in Bb. In other words if you play the note called “C” on any of those horns, you get a Bb on a piano. Baritone, Alto, and Sopranino play in Eb. A “C” on any of those horns will play an Eb on the piano. If you start at the lowest-pitched sax (Bass) and go through them in order from lowest horn to highest horn, the order of the horns I’d Bass, Baritone, Tenor, Alto, Soprano and Sopranino. The keys they play in go like this: Bb, Eb, Bb, Eb, Bb, Eb. Brass instruments (Trumpets, Tubas and like that… well, they have their own story). Remember that most saxes you see, though they’re made of brass, are considered to be WOODWINDS!. Why? You must clamp a bamboo reed on a sax [The reed is what produces the initial vibration that the horn turns into notes] and reed horns are considered to be woodwinds). The weird Saxophone is the “C Melody” sax. It DOES play the notes with the same pitches on a piano, having the same names on those notes. If you’re thoroughly confused, my work is done.
@@edryba4867 , nah, that made sense to me.
There were even places where the regular B was intonated lower.
In Germany still today, the “B“ referes to a Bb, while the B natural is actually seen as the adjusted note (and hence got the next letter in the alphabet: “H“, which in script looks a lot like a # … and then consider were the “flat sign“ b comes from…). It‘s a very interesting history, thanks for providing a glimpse of it in this video.
Is anyone else here after Drake?
At least he mentioned d flat and d major
What did he say?
Thank you for the nice explanation. We "see" these semitones as "black" or "white" only if we have previously seen a keyboard. On any other instrument, they are merely a semitone away from each other. I wonder if anyone has ever learnt to play a non' keyboard instrument without ever being exposed to a piano. An interesting speculation. I "think" in black or white notes, although I have played the trumpet and guitar in the past. Curious, isn't it?
Tritone exist . Western people :
Very interesting, and perfect timing for me! Precisely in these days I am studying about brass winds, to be able to write a solo for a song I am working on with a friend.
Music is racist
Black Notes Matter
This is super informative :) and ending with Simpsons is always appreciated :) greetings from Poland :)
5:11 - I'm writing a song in L minor.
For those who aren't aware, higher letters in the alphabet are used to describe super-low guitar tunings.
"What's that tuned to, dropped L?"
Good job on your references- Adam, Elam, and 12tone are the three music ytubes I trust the most.
This is the best video covering everything I was missing in music ❤ Thank you 👍🏻
Actually -- I believe (as does nuberiffic) that the basis for western music and modern keyboards was initially based on the A natural minor scale (Aeolian mode). One question I'm asked by my piano students that's related to this is: why does "the major scale" start with C instead of A? I believe the answer is that the major scale series of whole and half steps is but one of seven modes available from the 7 natural notes.
I think you covered it fairly well. The best answer I've come upon is that:
1. music was around for quite some time before keyboards were in existence.
2. in accordance with church decrees at that time, " ... music for use at Mass ... must be truly ecclesiastical in style, grave and devout in character." *
3. the Aeolian (minor) mode ( " ... grave and devout in character" ) was a prevalent mode in use at the time keyboards were coming into existence
4. the Aeolian mode is represented on the keyboard by all the natural keys, therefore beginning with A.
* excerpted from christianstudylibrary article: church-music-throughout-ages
... Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) complained that "modern church music is so constructed that the congregation cannot hear one distinct word." Not only was this a complaint against the use of the Latin when the people could not understand it. Erasmus was also criticizing how, in much of the church music of his day, the text was being sacrificed to the tune, the instrumental was crowding out the verbal. About a century and a half later, an official papal pronouncement declared that "all music for use at Mass ... must be truly ecclesiastical in style, grave and devout in character." The pope at that time forbade anyone "to sing with a solo voice, whether high or low, a hymn ... in whole or in large part." He also decreed that during Lent the playing of the organ was altogether prohibited (presumably to add more solemnity to that holy season). Evidently these restrictions were not sufficient to ensure "grave and devout" worship, because a hundred years later Pope Benedict XIV declared that "ecclesiastical music must be composed in a style which differs from that of the theatre. The solo, the duet, the trio, are forbidden." While the organ was "acceptable" and stringed instruments "tolerated," the "forbidden instruments included timpani, trumpets, oboes, flutes, mandolins" and "in general, all instruments which are theatrical in character." Another century passed and the Roman Catholic list of the forbidden included "long introductions or preludes," "brilliant pieces which are distracting," and "rapid and restless [instrumental] movements ... when the words express joy and exultation." Monetary fines were levied against violators found on the organ bench or in the choir loft and, after a third offense, such musicians would be dismissed.
///
The earliest keyboard instruments were a type of organ (3rd century BC - hydraulis), and their keyboards were not chromatic (did not need to be). The seven modes available from the naturals are each a combination of whole steps and half steps. While singing in any mode starting on any note is easy enough, to do that on a keyboard requires adding the missing half steps. Apparently they were added to keyboards gradually -- according to Britannica -- starting with Bb around the 10th century, followed by F#, and eventually all 5 sharps/flats by the early 1400's -- the earlest documented chromatic keyboard being a pipe organ at Halberstadt cathedral in 1361. This fills in all the missing half steps in the 7-note natural scale and makes it possible for any mode to be sung/played beginning on any pitch -- in addition to further chromatic enrichment of both melody and harmony.
Then there are the attending issues of temperament (which still exist today), with some organs (and harpsichords in early music ensembles) being tuned in temperaments other than even/equal temperament (meantone, Werckmeister, etc.). Digital organs typically have several temperaments available to choose from.
Nicola Vicentino’s Arciorgano from around 1560 had 36 keys per octave (there was also an archicembalo the same keyboard design). The white keys are the same as in a conventional keyboard. The black keys are split in two parts; the parts closest to the player are the sharp alteration, the back is the flat section, with the exception of D-sharp and E-flat, and A-sharp and B-flat. The lower manual has 19 keys in quarter-comma meantone with split black keys; the upper manual is the same, but without E-sharp and B-sharp, and tuned a quarter comma higher. The two manuals playing at different pitches, gives 36 individual pitches per octave.
David: Thanks so much for this video. Helps clear up a lot of those "I wonder why...." thoughts.
I know not a lot about music , the furthest I got was the recorder at school and the basic theory which no-one ever really explained the basis of so this is fascinating - as an engineer however I’m also curious to understand the actual frequencies that define each note - I have seen these on a guitar tuner (very early days of self teaching) but reading music is like learning a new language for me - thanks though 👍
In the most common, modern system A = 440 Hz, every octave is a frequency doubling. Each semitone is a twelfth root of two ratio from its neighbors. The twelfth root of 2 multiplied together 12 times is 2 (octave). Historical intervals equating to semitone intervals of 12, 7, 5, 4 are reaaaaaaallly close to small ratios 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, 5:4 which is why they sound so consonant, their beat frequency is closer to the average note frequencies.
12 has 6 divisors. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12. 1 and 12 have no use. So it makes chords more harmonic options than other options like 10 or 14.
Another major reason we would spell the note in question in the Moonlight Sonata as B# is because we find ourselves in C# minor in this moment and we can’t have two C’s in any diatonic scale. The B# is functioning as the leading tone in this example. The leading tone is maybe the most important part of the polarizing V-I chord progression in western music. Just my two cents.
Thanks for a great and informative video!
I don't know if some one already mentioned this BUT First the video is great and IMHO has a lot of excellent information and it's well organized like many others in this channel. That said , actually the absence of the "visual" black keys between B and C, E and F, is because the traditional keyboard establish almost 700 years ago isn't isomorphic in isomorphic layouts like Janko, there is no "visual" gap. Another point I would made is, it's not that traditional keyboard form "western music" is C based. Major mode became mainstream much later around XV or XVI centuries. The base reference was de Aeolian mode and it's why A is called A, it was the first note indeed. Since mid of XIV, this layout was established and haven't changed so far although other isomorphic proposals were developed but hasn't been greatly accepted. Tradition is hard to change specially if you learned the hard way and are lazy or envy to teach the new generation a better system that he/she haven't had a chance. Human beens! if I had to suffer you will have to suffer as well and manufactures will say "amem" for the sake of their business !!
What I’m interested in figuring out is why the months of the standard calendar have the same pattern as the keys of the chromatic [piano] scale starting on F: the months alternate between one containing 31 days and one containing less than 31 days *except* for the long-month pairs July/Aug (at the 7th and 8th positions) and Dec/Jan (at the 12th and “13th” position, where the pattern repeats), just as the keys starting on F alternate between white keys and black keys *except* for the white-key pairs B/C (at the 7th and 8th positions) and E/F (at the 12th and “13th” position, where the pattern repeats). Given that there are any number of other possible arrangements/patterns, this seems too weird to be coincidence!
Very clear. Congrats!
I never even noticed before. This was really informative. I've never played a piano or learned the notes before
brilliant explanation, subscribed
Thank you!!
I'd like to see this go deeper into why the spacing is tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone. Why did our forefathers choose those 8 notes? My understanding is that it's the mathematical ratios between the notes that's important, and it's nice clean/simple ratios that drive 'pleasant' sounds. To get a perfect octave up, from C1 to C2 for example, you simply double the frequency (2:1 ratio). To go from a C to a G (perfect 5th), the ratio is 3:2. We could stop here, as that's really all you need to calculate the other notes, however, let's continue. C to F (4th) gives a ratio close to 4:3. A major 3rd from C to an E, near enough 5:4. A minor third, C to D#, which is close to 6:5. The nice(ish) mathematical ratios here translate to intervals that sound quite nice to most ears. The tritone corresponds to a ratio of 45:32 (or 64:45), which is quite a complex ratio, and is reflected in how jarring the interval sounds. To get from some of the simple ratios described above to a wider set of notes was likely based on following the chain of notes that could be reached from those simple ratios. eg. the circle of 5ths (starting at F and following all the 3:2 ratios upwards) will eventually get you around the full 7 notes (and the flats/sharps too, albeit across octaves). If you follow the 3:2 ratio across octaves you'll notice that the notes don't quite line up (to get notes to line up across octaves, the ratio needed would actually be ~2.9966:2 instead of 3:2). The equal-temperament 12-tone scale (where each note's frequency is the previous note's frequency multiplied by 2^(1/12) ) provides a nice-enough approximation of all of these ratios in the 12 equally spaced notes, and has the added benefit that octaves line up exactly.
12 == 7 + 5 && 12 != 7 + 7) we may add only 5 notes to 7 to keep 12 notes octave) Thanks, your explanation is musically deep)
I suppose another reason for adding additional sharps and flats after B-flat and E-flat was so that you could transpose a given modal scale up or down to suit the range of your singers.
The more fundamental question is why does Western music use the particular pattern of tones and semitones that makes up the diatonic scale and its modes, rather than e.g. a pentatonic or chromatic scale?
Having gaps at least gives some very quick visual indication --- eg. land marks. Very quick and convenient visual indication - without needing to use colours, which probably wouldn't be as convenient - even though people probably could get used to it.
Thank you, David. Brilliant tutorial 👏
OK. But why did the labeling start 3 letters in at a "C" Major instead of just beginning with "A"? (more about naming than theory). Like couldn't the C major scale just as easily been called the A major, and the first semitone have been the creation of a Gb? In such case there'd be no semitone after notes C and G, like: A, A#/Bb, B, B#/Cb, C, D, D#/Eb, E, E#/Fb, F, F#/Gb, G. So why was it a "C" major scale?
Did you/could you do something that ties into this, which is how the circle of fifths F-C-G.....E-B ties into the notes that make up the church modes, and why it stops where it does? (My guess is that it's to avoid having 3 consecutive semitones in the "scale," much like the pentatonic scale follows a circle of fifths until it would create a semitone.)
Another wonderful video! Maybe sometime you can address how alternative keyboards (such as those used by chromatic accordions) can, in some ways, address the inconsistent layout of piano keys. I play piano and piano accordion, but have been told that starting with a chromatic keyboard layout can be much easier to learn to play, visualize, etc. Glad I subscribed!
David is doing his Music Theory 'flexing' here.
Look at it this way: If one can easily “bend” a note on a stringed instrument (other than, say, a piano) or on a woodwind, why shouldn’t one be able to “bend” music theory once in a while?