05-06-2011, 03:22 PM
I hope that this new thread goes somewhere, because I'm interested although fairly ignorant of music theory. For a long time I wondered why not every pair white keys had a half-step black one between them. Finally I got that those white keys were already only separated by a half note.
Your calling the accidental notes "moving" reminded me that J.S. Back was a big proponent of the Tempered Scale, which involved a little adjustment of certain notes. Maybe those were black keys.
Lots of instruments are adjustable on the fly, e.g. horns that the musician vibrates lips to make sound, and the voice, could make allowance for beauty. Instruments with keyboards and with holes are not able to do that.
In college, my fraternity participated in a Barbershop Quartet contest, and the expert we got to teach us explained that the chords that we sang could not be duplicated on a piano. They could only be done with voices because of the very slight differences in the notes that we sang vs. the ones that a piano would make. I just remember how electric my spine would feel when we did those notes just right.
So IMHO music does have a lot of information about the Creation and our part in it. You are right about Pythagoras, too.
Your calling the accidental notes "moving" reminded me that J.S. Back was a big proponent of the Tempered Scale, which involved a little adjustment of certain notes. Maybe those were black keys.
Lots of instruments are adjustable on the fly, e.g. horns that the musician vibrates lips to make sound, and the voice, could make allowance for beauty. Instruments with keyboards and with holes are not able to do that.
In college, my fraternity participated in a Barbershop Quartet contest, and the expert we got to teach us explained that the chords that we sang could not be duplicated on a piano. They could only be done with voices because of the very slight differences in the notes that we sang vs. the ones that a piano would make. I just remember how electric my spine would feel when we did those notes just right.
So IMHO music does have a lot of information about the Creation and our part in it. You are right about Pythagoras, too.