For example, C# and D#, in the diagram, are too close to each other. C# should be farther left, and D# should be farther right.
There is an interesting "fudging" that has to happen, though, because 5/12 is not exactly equal to 3/7 (each of which should be the width of CDE relative to CDEFGAB.... 5 keys out of 12, or 3 white keys out of 7 white keys)
I actually discuss it in detail here (and all the weird ways people mess this up): https://youtu.be/xwKlKcymfDs?t=33
Here is some JavaScript code for calculating where each key should go. You can paste in the final numbers at bottom if that's easier. They start at the left of C (zero) and assume each white key is width of 1:
var firstFiveWidth = 3/7; // c-e, 3 white keys
var lastSevenWidth = 4/7; // f-b, 4 white keys
// assume each of the 5 is equal width at back
var cSharpMiddle = firstFiveWidth * (3/10);
var dSharpMiddle = firstFiveWidth * (7/10);
// assume each of the 7 is equal width at back
var fSharpMiddle = firstFiveWidth + lastSevenWidth * (3/14);
var gSharpMiddle = firstFiveWidth + lastSevenWidth * (7/14);
var aSharpMiddle = firstFiveWidth + lastSevenWidth * (11/14);
// average width of what a key in first five and a
// key in last seven should be (then halve it)
var halfBlackKeyWidth = (((firstFiveWidth/5) + (lastSevenWidth/7))/2)/2;
var keys = [
0,
cSharpMiddle - halfBlackKeyWidth,
1/7,
dSharpMiddle - halfBlackKeyWidth,
2/7,
3/7,
fSharpMiddle - halfBlackKeyWidth,
4/7,
gSharpMiddle - halfBlackKeyWidth,
5/7,
aSharpMiddle - halfBlackKeyWidth,
6/7
]
console.log("black key width: " + (halfBlackKeyWidth*2*7))
console.log(keys.map(function(item){ return item *7}))
black key width: 0.5857142857142857
[
0,
0.607142857142857,
1,
1.807142857142857,
2,
3,
3.564285714285714,
4,
4.707142857142857,
5,
5.85,
6
]The placement so that the two groups of black keys, C#-D# and F#-G#-A#, are a little bit wider than the naive on-center placement, as if they were repelled from each other.
The thin parts of the white keys that are between the black keys are evenly spaced with the black keys: i.e. all 12 semitones are equally spaced at the back. The rear ends of the keys directly link to the striking mechanism, which lines up with evenly-spaced string courses.
For instance if you learn that a harmonic minor scale is made of 1 2 3b 4 5 6b 7 you can find the notes of that scale in any key very quickly, for instance Bb harmonic minor would be Bb C Db Eb F Gb A
However this requires that you understand what are 1, 2, 3b 4, 4#, etc, and have enough practice in translating it to notes to do it quickly.
Also if you learn this, then finding the chords that can be derived from any scale becomes super easy.
Now I understand that this a hustle for many people because of the initial effort that requires before is actually usable, and it's more easy to use tools such as the one presented, I just wanted you to know that there is something better albeit harder.
[googles it] On the "minor scale" wiki page they mention those three scales - "In music theory, the term minor scale refers to three scale patterns". There is no one "minor scale", that I'm aware of. Well, maybe you were taught that way, I don't know. Dorian mode (i.e. white piano notes from D up to D) is another commonly used minor scale; there are others.
I want to write my own and I struggle to find proper chords to melodic lines. Can anyone recommend resources to learn this (and tell me if harmonization is the proper term)?
[0] https://en.piano-fingering.org/flat-keys/1-flat-f-major/f-ma...
Edit: most awesome would actually be an animation of the hand playing the scale with cross-unders and whatnot but that sounds like a lot of work.
The site is remarkably comprehensive - circle of fifths and everything needed to both practice and understand the theory. Moreover, the site has a quirky design that's both cleaver and cute.
Top marks.
Tone.js is great. I’m using it to convert MIDI files and sync visuals on a jazz piano tutorial website I’m building[2].
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_MIDI_AP...
See my comment about how to calculate the piano key geometry (or just paste in my numbers) if you want your piano diagram to have correct placement of the keys (black keys shouldn't bisect the two adjacent white keys.... it makes the white key "stems" really narrow between black keys and looks weird).
Launching soon.
Major scale: 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 Minor scale: 2 1 2 2 1 2 2 etc
They sum up to 12 (octave)
Now that you got the theory, practice playing them evenly from every note and make sure they sound right.
Fingerings are a separate story though.
And that's true! The trouble is, the last time I tried learning using techniques like this, I could never remember it with any amount of practice, and it made me so down about music that I quit for years. If I cared much about melodies, improvising, and/or performance, I might have the drive to invest effort past that hurdle, but I don't. I did have the drive for sound design--which is at least as complicated as foundational western music theory--because the whole thing fascinates me, so that's what I prioritize.
[0] Piano Companion Pro. Worth the lifetime purchase ($12). https://www.songtive.com/products/piano-companion
I come up with chord progressions in my DAW and use them as "ghost notes" to paint a melody over.
It's even easier in many cases to learn harmonic minor as a natural minor w/ a sharpened 7th, borrowed from the parallel major scale. (This doesn't work so well for Bb minor, since its relative major is a pretty exotic Db major; in this case, it's in fact easier to start from the parallel major and find the actual scale degrees.)
E.g. I just learned from my roommates that I can form the major chord for any note by adding the keys that are 4 half-steps and 7 half-steps higher. And then swap out the 4 half-steps higher key for 3 half-steps higher to make the minor chord. Very cool :)
I've done a quick look and i've found this videos that I think are ok as starting point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDD4q9xd8Ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImFFi_QBnUs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWpXy57-mvc
Hope it helps
A few years ago I made a similar site with many more scales and modes than this one:
1. There is a major scale and a minor scale.
2. Actually, there are three minor scales: natural, melodic, and harmonic.
3. Actually, forget about those scales. Think instead more freely about tonality, modal mixtures, secondary dominants, and voice leading.
I think that anyone studying music is better off stopping at #1 or going all the way to #3. The problem with stopping at viewpoint #2 is that it's complex enough to make you really think, but not grounded enough in actual musical practice to make that thinking fruitful[1].
There are a lot of reasons why you might want a particular note to be sharp or flat. Sometimes you want a stronger resolution, like V -> i, rather than v -> i, which sounds weak. For that reason, to make better harmony, you may choose to make the 7th scale degree (B) a major 7th (B natural) instead of a minor 7th (B flat). You may also want to resolve a melodic line by half-step, which often sounds stronger, like B->C. But when you are stepping downwards, C->B, that's likely not any kind of resolution, so C->Bb is fine (it's likely not a resolution if you're in the key of C). These melodic concerns drive the "melodic" minor scale (and we drag in the 6th scale degree to avoid an augmented second interval).
The catch is... all we're really saying here is,
1. You are free to borrow notes from outside the key, for lots of reasons, and
2. There are lots of reasons in particular why you might want to borrow for the sixth and seventh scale degrees.
These deeper concepts get shoehorned into the notions of "melodic minor" and "harmonic minor". So much is lost by shoehorning these ideas into scales that I wonder why we even bother. I think it's really that people like categorizing scales and learning new names for things, which also drives people's fascination with modes, which is totally out of proportion to how much you'd actually want to use them in music. Modes and scales seem to have a particular fascination for hackers in the music scene.
I have a lot more to say on this subject, but I'm working on a blog post.
[1]: Please note that you definitely can choose to write music using one of these scales as a device, and many people do, and it's good stuff. It's just that most music that most people listen to doesn't make any sense to analyze as using particular minor scales.
I don't get this. Modes show up all the time in popular music of the last 50 years. Am I missing something?
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/minor-scale-guide#what-...
> 3 Types of Minor Scales
> There are three types of minor scales in music theory.
What type of "music theory"? Dorian mode doesn't count? Maybe 3 in classical music theory, not in jazz or..rock/pop/contemporary music etc. And calling them "types" of minor scale sounds very odd to me.
> The natural minor scale is the most common minor scale.
Is that true? Arguably not. What sort of music are they talking? Does it mean "out of all music ever written" or "nowadays in music" or..something else? They might mean, "in classical music before the mid 19th C" if they say there are 3 minor scales. Or, most likely, "This is true by definition ..because it's called natural minor." - they probably never thought about if it's true or not. The scale of a piece/song (usually) depends on the melody, and I think Aeolian (i.e. "natural") and Dorian are both common. Possibly Dorian is much more common - that "minor 6" sound very common in pop songs since..forever, the 60s if not way before, is Dorian not Aeolian. It's extremely common in R&B etc. Or like..uh..the second chord of Here, There and Everywhere, Gmajor then Amin, the scale is evidently not Aeolian but Dorian.
> the default when a musician refers to “a minor scale” or “minor.”
Well, this is questionable too. Depends what kind of music. "Minor" mostly refers to a chord, not a scale. I'm not sure people ever say "a minor scale", when would you (need to) say that? It might mean a minor blues scale in some genres.
> The natural minor scale pattern features the same exact notes as the Aeolian mode in modal music.
I find that super-bizarre and sounds like they don't know what they're talking about. Features the same exact notes?! - it's the same thing. A little like saying "news.ycombinator.com features the same exact articles as Hacker News". You would think "What the hell are they talking about?!", and that's what I think when I read that sentence.
Although I do think I was initially taught the "minor scale" was the natural minor, so that may be where the OPs decision comes from.
Edit: Just saw info on the site. It is using natural.
Eh, just worry about Off Minor.
That's what all Western music music is based on. Divide the frequency space between N Hz and 2N Hz into 12 segments, pick seven tones out of the 12, then figure out where you're actually going to put the two notes that are right next to each other, half-steps. Extend that for your entire frequency space. (Also, if you devise two neighbor-patterns that are the same when you rotate them around, you're doing modes.)
Now, whether anyone plays them in general practice is another thing. Is the harpsichord a real instrument? Obviously on paper, but is it actually a thing?
1. Identify what key you’re in (I.e what scale you want to use to build the harmonies from) 2. Start with the note you’re looking to harmonize, and play that note and every other note from the scale in step 1. 3. Do some final touch up work:
eg the chord you made in step 2, should probably be inverted to space the notes out more
eg playing a chord for “every” note in your melody will be too much. So choose the chords that work best over all, but you can always add chords back in as passing chords
eg once you’ve plaid the first three notes of the harmonization (root, third, fifth) you can be more liberal with the next notes and leave the pattern I described. So for example you can flatten/sharpen the next note in the sequence, or even play an entirely different note. Having the first 3 notes will ground the chord strong enough harmonically to let you do whatever you want with the rest and still retain the character of the chord. This helps you create more interesting and tense sounds and also let’s you harmonize notes in less traditional ways than before.
I typed this on my phone but I hope that helps. Last thing is just try harmonization of the c major scale. It will sound like you’re playing the scale with “chords”. Then try harmonizing Mary had a little lamb and so on. You can basically play anything by ear once you get a hang of this.
This is a challenging task, almost as hard as composition itself! It's easier if you have a matching baseline to go with the melody, since there are often idiomatic chords that can be played with a given bass note. (Such as the famous "rule of the octave", that has you playing root-position chords on the tonic and dominant, and first inversion chords (i.e. harmonizing with thirds and sixths over the bass) in all other scale degrees.)
Of course you could improvise a baseline for your melody and then harmonize that, but this requires a lot of familiarity with the rules of counterpoint.
Harmonization is the right word.
(But, as the name suggests, it's not a shortcut rules-of-thumb bypassing the theory kind of resource.)
When you think you've got it right, look up the `official' chords in a book or online (be careful online, I've found some hilariously wrong chords for pop songs).
Developing your ear is the most important thing. `Rules' for harmony just summarise what many people have thought sounds good. Theory also provides a language for talking about what the music is doing (whether or not the music is conventional).
Work the other way around too: take a chord progression (whether from an existing song, or of your own creation), and improvise singing a melody over the top. The singing is important because it forces you to just use the natural notes that come into your head against each chord.
Also, investigate different notes against a given chord. While just keeping on playing the same chord, taking each of the twelve chromatic notes in turn, play it over the chord: does it sound `resolved' or `normal', or `unresolved' / `weird' / `tense', if the latter try using it in a melodic phrase between two `normal' sounding notes.
The chord for a given bit of melody often contains most or all of the melody notes. It often contains all of the stronger notes in the melody. A melody note can be `stronger' by being on a strong beat, by lasting longer, by being first or last in a phrase, etc.
Although, in a given key, every chord contains all the notes of the scale. For example, in C major, chord I fully extended is: C (root), E (major third), G (perfect fifth), B (major seventh), D (major ninth), F (perfect eleventh), A (major thirteenth). But that's all the notes of the scale, just organised in a particular way (in scale-wise thirds, starting on C). So any bit of a C major melody contains `only' notes from a (fully extended) C major chord. (Fully extending the C major chord in another key which contains it will give different extended notes, for example, in G major, the C major chord is chord IV and will have F# as the (augmented or sharp) eleventh.)
But each note of the scale has a different `sound' or `meaning' in the context of a given chord. A melody using Cs, Es and Gs over a C major chord will sound `grounded' and `normal'. A melody using Ds, Fs and As over a C major chord will sound `jazzy' or `floaty'. A melody using Cs, Es and Gs over a Bb major chord will sound `jazzy' or `floaty. A melody using Ds, Fs and As over a D minor chord will sound `grounded' and 'normal'.
But you can't look at each part of the melody and a chord for it in isolation. You probably want the chord progression on its own to have some sense to it: to feel like its going somewhere, telling a story, sometimes unsurprising, sometimes surprising.
Different styles of music harmonise their melodies in different ways. A hymn tune, versus a jazz bebop tune, versus a Joni Mitchell song. Within the same style, different harmonisations are possible. E.g. here is Chick Corea reharmonising his own Spain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsQRFgU2fz4 .
For you maybe. None of music theory makes even a smidgen of sense to me. Absolutely none of it.
FTA:
>First, a reference chart of the major scales, with keys in order of 5ths, as with the circle of fifths. This illustrates that there's just one note difference (at the 7th scale degree) between scales formed from keys that are separated by a fifth.
Uh.. nothing about the circle of fifths illustrates anything. Also it's plain to hear that all those scales have different notes given that they all start on different notes, so clearly they differ by more than just the seventh degree.
I dunno, I hate music theory
Work it out on music paper, keeping in mind the pattern of whole- and half-steps that defines the diatonic scale. You'll see that it works out. It's not directly illustrated by the circle of fifths, as I point out in a sibling comment. But it works.
The musically-relevant consequence is that you can transpose stuff by separately considering diatonic shifts (depending on the interval you're transposing) and chromatic alterations. It's pretty nifty and intuitive.
> Also it's plain to hear that all those scales have different notes given that they all start on different notes, so clearly they differ by more than just the seventh degree.
Nitpicking, the scales are different in how they assign scale degrees but the sets/collections of pitch classes that define the diatonic scale (hence the key signature) differ by one note as described.
Such as the fact that the circle of fifths also determines the type of sharps or flats found in the matching key signature, and that the last-added "sharp" in the key signature pertains to the leading tone in major (G major has an F#, and so on) or the second scale degree in minor. Conversely, the last-added flat in a key signature pertains to the fourth scale degree in the major mode, and the next-last (if any) to the tonic.
When these discussions pop up, you see a lot of examples of songs that have borrowed chords or modal mixtures... "Oh, this song uses a mode in the bridge, or that song uses a mode except for the intro, or this other song switches between two modes." When songs have a lot of borrowed chords or borrowed notes, it more or less subsumes the idea of modes.
The problem is that modes are somewhat fragile things. As you mix more borrowed notes and borrowed chords into a song, the notes that make a mode sound like a mode get drowned out, and you're left with just a key center and a tonality (or not even that). That leaves precious few popular songs that actually sound like they're using a mode.
There are some specific genres where you see certain scales over and over, like the mixolydian scale in blues music, but blues typically relies so heavily on mixed tonalities.
Could it be improved if it supported web midi and encouraged you to actually use your keyboard? Maybe. (I actually do web apps that do that) But I'm curious why you can't see its value for what it is, which guides learning rather than just basically saying "figure it out on your own."
> C natural minor scale. the default when we just say 'C minor scale'
I've always found the three forms of the minor scale to be pointless pedantry: Bach was happy enough to write a C-minor piece with two flats on the staff, lowering 6 and raising 7 as needed by voice-leading and harmony, but that doesn't lend itself easily to a silly fingering chart.
My misspent youth earned me a degree in theory and composition, but I've found myself in your situation every time I've cracked open a scale book to freshen up and pass a hairy eye-ball over natural, melodic, and harmonic forms. You're right: they are not "real things", they are just a silly pedagogical contraption.
I think in classical music theory, you really "start" from the natural minor and then the harmonic and melodic scales can be explained in terms of leading tones etc.
Of course, the way classical music (at least anything between Baroque and Romanticism) works is rather different from the way Jazz works.
We generally used minor (with no modifiers) to typically mean natural minor, but the teacher also essentially said that minor can mean a lot of things and gets complicated.
The width of all keys, white or black, should be equal to one another at the back of the keyboard.
The width of the white keys should be exactly equal to one another at the front of the keyboard.
Those can't both be true (since 5/12 isn't equal to 3/7), so the former has to be fudged a bit.
My formula is in a different comment. :)
The black and white keys are instantly recognisable as a piano, but need a bit more inspection to notice the error.
"A minor is a minor scale based on A, with the pitches A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Its key signature has no flats and no sharps. Its relative major is C major and is parallel major is A major."
Then it goes on to discuss the melodic and harmonic versions. Notably, those need accidentals since the key signature itself describes A natural minor. That in itself suggests "default" for the natural version. As does the name "natural."
[looks at the page] Wow, the scale of "A minor" has a wikipedia page?!..uh no, it seems it's about the key of A minor, and the whole thing confuses the key and the associated scale. That's very weird!
To explain slightly - in my understanding, saying a classical piece is "In C minor" as they do, usually means it starts and ends (at least) in the key of C minor. "C" means the root or I of the home/tonic chord is C, "minor" means the third is Eb ("major" would mean it's E). The fifth is always G, so not specified. This key specifies the (most important/initial) root triad. It says nothing about the other notes of the scale. The most important chord besides the I chord, the V7, has a B natural, which will usually occur often in the melody, and is not in the "natural minor" scale. Etc. Key =/= scale.
Another example from Wikipedia, from the "key" page: "In music theory, the key of a piece is the group of pitches, or scale, that forms the basis of a music composition in classical, Western art, and Western pop music."
I don't think Wikipedia is alone in this.
I'll admit I sometimes use the words "scale" (as well as the word "note") when I might have used "key" because it can get ambiguous and confusing given the overlapping meanings (such as a "piano key").