Paul Davis wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 13:57 -0400, Charles Linart wrote:
>
>> The Western scale is only seven notes. Ever heard of an octave? The
>> Eastern (pentatonic) scale has five notes.
>>
>> If notes are notes only because I've been "conditioned" for them, why
>> do the same notes show up in music all over the world? Probably has
>> something to do with the limitations of the human voice and the human
>> ear. Whatever the explanation, the bushman and Mozart incorporate the
>> same 12 fundamental harmonics in their music. The sound of a yak
>> belch can be part of a rhythm, but it is utterly useless as a
>> component of melody -- unless it happens by chance to be a note.
>>
>
> but thats just it, isn't it? who says melody is the important part?
>
> as for the explanation, its not all that hard. its mostly to do with the
> number of ratios between two different frequencies you can fit into a
> single doubling (an octave). if you want harmony, then there are limits
> to this number because the ratios need to have certain properties. if
> you don't care about harmony (or at least, don't care about it as much),
> then there are less (or even no) limits on the ratios, and thus the
> number of "notes" per octave.
>
I contend that traditional western harmony did imply a consonant or
dissonant combination of 12-tone-based combination of 2 or more notes.
But, today I would say that that could be _any_ combination of notes in
any scale structure. And, to be precise, a tempered instrument can only
come close approximating perfect harmony, of course.
-- brad fuller http://www.Sonaural.com/ +1 (408) 799-6124 _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-userReceived on Fri Apr 6 00:15:06 2007
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