Music
From WhyNotWiki
- listening/appreciation / Favorite music
- understanding/theory
- math in music
Contents |
[edit] Misc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilypond
[edit] Searching
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsons_code
[edit] Musipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musipedia : "Musipedia is a search engine for identifying pieces of music. This can be done by whistling a theme, playing it on a virtual piano keyboard, tapping the rhythm on the computer keyboard, or entering the Parsons code."
http://www.musipedia.org/index.php
[edit] Intervals
1 WS = 2 HS
minor second = 1 HS
major second = 1 WS
[edit] [Questions (category)] Why do conductors say "3 measures after 20" to refer to measure 22 when it's really only 2 measures after 20?
Or they will say "the 3rd measure of 20", which actually makes more sense.
They wouldn't say "3 measures before 20" to refer to 18! They also wouldn't say "2 after the beginning" to refer to measure 2 (the "beginning" is measure 1, so 1 after that is measure 2, 2 after it is measure 3, and so on)! So why the double standard? Why treat rehearsal marks in the middle of the peace, when referring to a measure after one of them, differently?
The reason for this, I'm guessing, is:
- they do all their counting from 1, not 0 -- all counting in music, in fact, starts at 1
- they're usually in "3rd measure of" (counting) mode and it just happens to come out as "3 measures after" (difference/subtraction), because they are musicians, not mathematicians after all
- there's actually a good practical reason to do this: for anyone who has a big chunk of rest at that rehearsal mark--say 5 measures starting at D and then another 6--, it is easier to do the math: if the conductor says "we're starting 7 bars after D", then they can subtract 5 measures for the first block of rests to get 2, and they know they can start counting at "2" in the second block: "2, 2, 3, 4; 3, 2, 3, 4; 4, ...". Simple math: 7-5=2.
- If instead the "7 bars after" were taken literally, D would be counted as 0 and 7 bars after D would land us 2 measures after the beginning of the second block of rests, which we would start counting as "3", "3, 2, 3, 4; ...; 6, 2, 3, 4". 7-5+1=3: not as simple math.
An illustration would be in order:
D
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 <-- actual measure differences ("1 after D" should be literally 1 after D)
|-------5------|--------6--------|
/ rests \ / rests \
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 <-- how a musician actually counts (D is measure "1", 1 *after* D is measure "2")
234234...
[edit] Instruments being in a key
What does it mean for an instrument to be in the key of B-flat, or C, or E-flat?
[edit] Time signatures
[edit] Why do we use a strange fraction like 4/4 as our most common time signature?
Why not "1/1"? Well, I guess it has to do with how the pulse of most Western music just happens to be "in four" (some of it is also in "in three" or "in two"). Having conceded to having four beats per measure, what should we have as the value of each beat? We could make each one a whole note, but then each measure would have 4 whole notes' worth of time--which is kind of silly. So now I must admit that 4/4 is not so odd after all! Four beats to the measure, because that's just how it sounds and needs to be, and each of those four beats has a value of 1/4, so that each measure has a total of "1". Makes sense.
[edit] [Math (category)] Math in music
[edit] Time signatures
4/4 really means 4 beats * 1/4 of a whole note value/beat
6/8 is tricky because the "numerator" is not the same as the number of beats in the measure. I think it would be more accurately written as 2 * 3/8 . You will note that these are mathematically equivalent!
I think we should do away with the single fraction and instead put two numbers: the number of beats/measure, and the value of each beat (which may be something odd like 3/8, not necessarily something with the 1 as the numerator!).
[edit] Accidentals
[edit] Why do they put accidentals in parentheses sometimes?
It means "you should have already known that this note was sharp or flat or natural (due to the key signature), but we figured we should remind you of it anyway since you might be likely to not notice that it changed back...the accidental from the previous measure is no longer in effect in this measure and we just want to make double sure that you're aware of that!".
Or, more technically:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_sharp#Courtesy_accidentals "Courtesy_accidentals":
Although a barline is nowadays understood to cancel the effect of an accidental (except for a tied note), often publishers will use a courtesy accidental (also referred to as a cautionary accidental or a reminder accidental) as a reminder of the correct pitch if the same note occurs in the following measure. This usage varies, although a few situations are construed to require a courtesy accidental, such as
- when the first note in a measure is one which had had an accidental applied in the previous measure
- after a tie carries an accidental across a barline, when the same note appears again in the subsequent measure.
[edit] [Questions (category)] Why do we need double sharps or double flats?
"Couldn't they have just written that Dx as a E?", you ask?
The answer is, yes they could have. The two are enharmonically equivalent: they are the same note, just spelled differently!
So why do they do that then? The answer is that we have a convention in music that "an individual note name may only occur once in a given diatonic scale".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enharmonic
In a given diatonic scale, an individual note name may only occur once. In the key of F for example, the major scale is: 'F, G, A, B♭, C, D, E, (F)'. Thus, the 'B♭' is called 'B♭' rather than 'A♯' as we already have a note named 'A' in the scale. The scale of F♯ major is: 'F♯, G♯, A♯, B, C♯, D♯, E♯, (F♯)'; thus we use the term 'A♯' instead of 'B♭' as we need the name 'B' to represent the 'B' note in the scale, and 'E♯' instead of 'F' as we need the name 'F' to represent the 'F♯' note in the scale.
So if you're in a key signature with sharps (say A, with 3 sharps), you would typically not ever see a step from G♯ to G. Instead, the writer would want to use an enharmonic equivalent to G spelled with the note name "F". The only enharmonic that matches these requirements is Fx. So you might see it step like this: A, G#, Fx, E# rather than A, G#, G, F.
