Circle of fifths, enharmonics?

Harmony & Theory
#41

Idunno, man. I was introduced to enharmonic equivalence as a young adult, as well, probably 20 or so, and I didn’t think it was THAT confusing or hard to remember; I think if you start with WHY youd sometimes want to name a note with a sharp or sometimes want to name a note as a flat, and get THAT concept down (basically, that context matters), then it becomes pretty intuitive.

I mean, it’s like left and right - they’re not absolute measures of direction. They’re measures of direction relative to a point of perspective. It’s not a perfect analogue, but it’s sort of the same thing - whether it’s a Bb or an A# depends on the key or scale you’re in, because the naming system is designed to capture musical function, rather than just absolute pitch.

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#42

If your concern is singing/audiation in real time, singable note names, yes, absolutely solfege. Ascending and descending syllables.

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#43

yes @WhammyStarScream +1 to solfege. movable do: single syllable for each pitch in relation to a key center. fixed do (often less useful, but more relevant to your question) : single syllable for every pitch name (A, A#, Bb, B, etc) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solfège

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#44

About spiral? Sure
Usually one would think that if you start from C and go fifth up, fifth up, fifth up and so on then you would return in C. Though theoretically speaking you would never return to C. Actually you won’t even get to F. Instead you would come in E# (which is enharmonical for F). Then, since we move in fifth, you’d get B#, which is enharmonical to C.
Then you would get double-sharps, triple-sharps etc, which is kinda funny.

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#45

The thing is, that a# and bb are not the same notes. Approaching music that way is like trying to understand math with only even numbers. The key on the piano or the fret on the guitar where we find them now are just an approximation to either of them in their many possible contexts. We have equal temperament today, which means, that beside the octave, no other intervall is justly tuned. Major thirds are to big e.g. So basically all of our ( guitar, piano, harp, the “tuned” instruments) chords suck now.
The beginnings of theory stem from a time where music was supposed to be sung. Hence terms like voice leading, voicing, etc. An unaccompanied choir will naturally go for just tuned chords, so it makes a huge difference, if they sing an a# as a third or a bb as a 5th - they will be different pitches. The particular key on a piano however will produce either a slighty sharp major third to f# or an almost tuned 5th to eb. That difference is still there, even if a guitar or Keyboard doesn’t have enough frets or keys to visualize it. Equal tuning was invented to enable modulation on keyboard instruments, but it obfuscates these subtle differences.

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#46

Yep. And there’s an interesting phenomena: violinists tend to intonate say A# and Bb differently (sharp note is a bit higher). Strange guys )

#47

I am not sure i follow here. They usually try to intone as just as possible. That means an a# will be “flat” or “sharp” according to its context. Same for the bb. What would the musical use of playing a# too high in a D# chord be?
I think this is more an aspect of voice leading and musical interpretation than of enharmonic intonation. x#'s indicate ascending motion, xb’s indicate descending motion, although this is only true for accidentals, and still dependend on context. Sharp /flat accidentals of this variety commonly create a b5 or a #4. this dissonance and the way it is commonly resolved (#4 outwards, b5 inwards) can be further accentuated by making the b5 a bit too small and the #4 a bit too wide, detuning both a bit and creating more tension before the resolve.

#48

There were some research, and it revealed that many violinists unconciously play ‘sharp’ notes a bit higher than their enharmonical ‘flat’ equivalents. Quite interesting, considering the fact that noone taught them to do it.
The most interesting fact that in case of pythagorian temperament sharps are actually higher than flats. Although I’m pretty sure that not so many violinists aware of pythagorian tuning.
Some strange psycological phenomena

#49

Well, there may have been such teaching as well. I recently browsed some soviet violin tutorial and it had some detailed discussion on such things. Can’t remember the title of the book though. I’d try to find it if you’re interested.

A little memory: when I was a kid and studied at a music school, the teacher at solfege lessons told me several times that I tend to sing flats and sharps “like string players do”. Actually I even remember how I once sight-singing some melody and sang Bb and then A, and she said “oh, you’ve got such a STRING B-flat”. I asked “what does it mean?”, and she replied “it’s lower than B-flat on piano”. And it seemed that she was enjoying that :slight_smile:

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#50

I dob’t rememver the source name. Anyway, they usually teach that thing on ‘orchestration’ classes, so you as a director (or a composer) would be aware what you could expect of that strange guys dressed in smokings ))

#51

So after looking at solfege, I’d rather just sing the note names. I’ll just add an S or F sound for the sharps/flats.

But I come into this same issue again, in fixed chromatic solfege some notes don’t have flat, and some don’t have sharp.
This is due to the naming convention again right? Should I be missing out the sharps n flats just like some solfege notes do?

#52

How is this an issue? What problem are you trying to solve?

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#53

Because I don’t understand why. I don’t have enough memorized to see it all fit together.
But in naming the flats n sharps what ones should I not name?

#54

My advice is to start singing intervals, like octave, fifth, major/minor third. Then singing natural major and natural minor. After you get them in your memory you may choose different scales, like harmonic minor, nat.major modes, melodic minor etc. You have to sing them in every key, so it would be 12 versions of each scale.

Once you get enough of practice, you’ll notice that that scales are built on some particular rules. To simplify it we may reduce them to 2 rules:

  1. Any of these scales includes all letters: A,B,C,D,E,F,G. They could have or could have not accidentals (sharps/flats)
  2. There’re no doubles in one scale, like C and C#, or A# and Ab.

Knowing this you could now understand for exapmle why F-major has Bb but not A#. Because, if it has A# then it would consist of F,G,A,A,C,D,E (ignore accidentals for now). So, it don’t have B, and it has two A, which is no good.
The same stays true for any fancy scale like C# major. Since it’s C (ignore accidentals) it must consist of C,D,E,F,G,A,B. Now, all you have to do is to place accidentals to make it C#-major (whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half). Which gives you C# D# E# F# G# A# B#… You may say “wait a minute?? what about this E#? Isn’t it an F actually?” Well, from the point of piano keys or guitar frets - yes. From the point of theory - no. Since if we choose F instead of E# then we would have C,D,F,F,G,A,B letters, which is no good ( double F, missing E).

You may try to experiment with another interesting scales, like F# double harmonic major. According to rules you know that it must be F,G,A,B,C,D,E sequence. Now we have to place accidentals considering the starting note (F#) and d.harm.major structure (half-3/2-half-whole-half-3/2-half).

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#55

So lets say I sing the chromatic scale.

If I get to E#, Should I still have that in the scale? Or should it just be F?

There is this enharmonic naming rule right? Does it apply to the chromatic scale?
As I notice the solfege has certain sharp flat notes unnamed, and I’m wondering is this due to the naming convention? And the natural note should be used to conform to this naming rule?

#56

Two things may be enharmonic. Not sure what “rule” you are referring to. The rules apply to use of accidentals, and key signatures afford avoidance of necessity of the use of accidentals.

If you sing the chromatic scale up, you might want to use sharps. Singing down, use flats. This reflects convention. The important things are the singing, hearing, and understanding what one is singing/hearing.

#57

Oh, these rules appliable to heptatonic scales only. Anyway.
It may sounds strange but singing chromatic scale is quite useless. It has no recognisable patterns since it’s just a bunch of minor seconds. For example, you listen Malmsteens ‘Black Star’ lick and you already know that it’s a harmonic minor (or it’s mode).
Anyway, chromatic scale accidentals are of historical meaning and they have no much theoretical meaning. Lets say you use chromatic major. It’s designed to have all eight letters (we use so called german system) C,D,E,F,G,A,B,H. So in ascending motion we just rise every note we could rise without interfering with next note. So we get: C C# D D# E F F# G G# A B H.
We didn’t use E# since it will interfere with F. And we used german B (which is english Bb) and H (which is english B). So in english mus.theory it looks like: C C# D D# E F F# G G# A Bb B. And so on. Nothing important, just historical reasons.

#58

It’s extremely useful to transcription when unsure about a particular pitch in context, but whatever.

#59

Hmm, never used it in that way. Usually you hear what scale the song uses and then you hear whether the current note is diatonic to the scale or not. If it’s not - then it’s whether higher than closest diatonic note or lower. Even if you have some doubts you could alway use intervals.
I can’t remember any cases when chromatic scale was useful in that context.

#60

Well, sounds like you’ve never used it that way.