Key Signatures and The Guitar

Then you’re not seeing the diatonic bias of the piano, and you’re not grasping what Pat Martino said:

"… the communal language of music that all musicians share - that is, the language of scales, theory, and intervals that we all use when explaining or communicating music - really has nothing to do with any instrument other than the piano.”

I’ve already gone over this, but I will pull some of my earlier posts as quotes. All of this stuff is apparently unconscious to most of you, because you’ve never thought about it from a fresh perspective.

I was surprised that RockStarJazzCat did not grasp this last point:

On the physical piano keyboard, there is no physical black note between E-F or B-C. These are two white notes, and two letter names, in a row. This corresponds with the staff: E-F and B-C.
C-D has either a C# or a Db between it, which will be a black note physically. Do I have to explain this?

Isn’t that only true in C or A minor, though? In the key of, say, Bb, playing a diatonic scale requires two black keys, Bb and Eb.

Please leave me out of this. Both instruments are chromatic and the C fixation is weird. I play both instruments and have said all I wish to say.

I don’t understand the question. Bb is a diatonic scale, and it has two flats: Bb and Eb. Both of these are named black notes. Thus, the Bb major scale has one unique form on the piano, with two black notes. The two physical black notes are reflected on the staff by using “accidentals,” or flats.
On the guitar, Bb and Eb are just “note names.” One fret looks like the other. There are no “black frets.” Does that explain it?

You are in the conversation. I’ll quote you if I need to, if it is in the service of discussion.

As far as the “C” fixation, this is true only on the piano: C-D-E-F-G-A-B are all letter-names, and all are white notes. This underscores the “primacy” of the C-major scale, as I quoted from the Harvard Dictionary of Music:
“In Western tonal music, the primacy of the C-major scale, played entirely on the lower keys, must derive in some measure from the traditional keyboard design.” —The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, 1986, from the definition of “keyboard,” page 427.

As to the piano and guitar both being chromatic, yes, both are capable of playing chromatically. This is obvious. But consider the diatonic bias of the piano keyboard: 7 white notes, and 5 black notes. 7 + 5 = 12.
This is also the formula for diatonic scales: 7 notes, with 5 left over.
The guitar is not based on a 7+5 diatonic schema; it is totally chromatic.

I think I see what you’re saying with the half steps. A guitar player doesn’t fret (fret, get it? :smile: ) about half steps but a piano player has those black keys for some and none for others. Piano’s still pretty chromatic to me. Now clarinet, that’s definitely not chromatic.

As for that Pat Martino article I think that the overall point he’s trying to make is how the guitar lends itself to different approaches (physically and mentally) towards chord construction than piano. Formal music teaching is based around the piano and is applied all too often to guitar. The guitar is a relatively new instrument and is lacking a really good formal method of teaching.

The matrix and cluster chord info in that Martino article is second nature to Bossa nova and rumba players. The chord charts look like a harmonic lesson of Gilberto’s Desafinado.

You can see it in other instruments as well; the alto sax is an “Eb” instrument, so it has key areas that it is easier to play in.
With piano, any key signature makes a unique and logical pattern of black & white notes. Example: in Bb, one black note is the second in the group of two (Eb), and third in the group of three (Bb). It makes an easily recognizable visual pattern.
What Pat Martino sees is that the guitar, being chromatic, corresponds to the chromatic scale, not the diatonic. This means “twelve-ness,” not “seven-ness.”
With 12 notes, the octave (corresponding to the guitar neck in one direction horizontally, can be divided not just as 7+5, but as any multiple of twelve: 2, 3, 4, or 6. That’s where patterns are “automatic” and repeating, such as diminished shapes (every fourth fret: 4 x 3 = 12) and augmented shapes (3 x 4 = 12).
This is what Pat Martino means by “the piano is based on addition, and the guitar is based on multiplication.”

As far as chromatic thinking and teaching, we are finally starting to make progress in this area.

Hi all, quick reminder from your friendly neighborhood moderator to please keep the debate respectful. I know it can sometimes be hard to capture nuance / tone / intent in written posts, and I’ll urge everyone to please try to read others’ posts with as charitable an interpretation as reasonably possible.

That said, if you post something and multiple people think it comes across poorly, whether hostile or overly defensive or whatever, that’s also valid feedback and should be considered, even if you feel your post was perceived differently than you intended. When this sort of thing happens I think we need to collectively try to reset and not let it get personal.

BTW most of this theory discussion is a bit over my head and I have no horse in this race when it comes to the original topic. But I can tell the discussion is going off the rails a bit. I enjoy spirited debate but let’s keep in mind no one wins a prize for “rebuttal with best use of quoted posts” etc. :slight_smile: Ultimately everyone’s here just trying to learn and hopefully be exposed to some new perspectives.

So I suggest before posting further let’s keep it focused on ideas, assume the best of others, and try to avoid any personal sniping. Otherwise I can close the topic entirely but I’d rather not as it seems there is some interesting discussion here. Thanks!

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Until someone defines precisely what distinguishes a ‘chromatic instrument’ from a ‘diatonic instrument’, any effort to determine which, if either, of those categories a guitar fits into will likely continue to approximate an angels-dancing-on-pinheads type of argument.

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But, isn’t that more of a product of the naming convention used within western harmony, seven degrees with sharp or flat modifiers to round it out to a full chromatic scale? Like, in the Greek era where our standard diatonic modes were derived, you had seven pitches and that was all you got, and if you wanted to play in a different tonality, then you just started on a different scale degree? And the sharps and flats were introduced to subdivide the octave into not seven but 12 intervals, allowing you to play any mode off ANY degree of the original diatonic scale, including any of the new altered versions of those degrees to round out the octave?

I mean, I’m with you to a certain extent in that the white notes on a piano spell out a diatonic scale, sure. I don’t think that makes the piano inherently “diatonic” though - you could as easily argue that the black notes, Db, Eb, Gb, Ab, and Bb, spell out a Eb minor pentatonic scale, and therefore the piano is pentatonic, not diatonic, provided you ignore all the white key. Which, to me, seems just as unfair an argument to make is that the piano is diatonic, provided you ignore the black keys.

I guess if your argument is the whole system of sharps and flats take as their default starting point a seven note scale with an intervallic structure we consider “diatonic,” then yeah, I guess… The piano reflects the convention of naming pitches a little more directly than most other instruments I can think of, including the guitar. But by that argument ALL western music is diatonic, which clearly isn’t the case; we just have a notational system based on seven degrees, but what we choose to do with those degrees and their accidentals is up to us.

As far as the guitar, then sure, B and Bb visually look the same, whereas on the piano one is black and small and one is white and large. But, they’re also pretty clearly two distinct pitches, and just because there isn’t any visual differentiation doesn’t mean we don’t notate one with no sharp or flat sign and the other with a flat sign, either on the key signature or the staff. You can play guitar without giving any thought to what these pitches are… but I have a hard time seeing that as somehow expanding our knowledge of how music works, playing blindly with no thought given to harmonic function or relationship to other pitches.

Idunno. I’m really trying to understand what you’re saying here, man, but the closest I can come is that maybe you’re arguing the entirety of western notation is diatonic and because the piano keyboard differentiates naturals from altered pitches it’s somehow more diatonic than an instrument that doesn’t. If that’s what you’re arguing, then I disagree with you, which, hey, that’s cool. But, if you’re saying something else, then I think you’re doing so in a manner that’s unclear to a LOT of people in this thread…

Yeah, I think this may be where I’m getting hung up, too, Induction.

Yes, that’s a good starting point, a “given.”

"… the communal language of music that all musicians share - that is, the language of scales, theory, and intervals that we all use when explaining or communicating music - really has nothing to do with any instrument other than the piano.”—Pat Martino

Ok, cool.

“You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” - Inigo Montoya

I think we’re talking in circles, man, and if all you’ve got by way of explanation is that one quote, then I don’t think we’re going to make any headway. I’m out. :+1:

Have a nice day!:slightly_smiling_face:

I understand what he’s saying. I’ve studied music theory on the University level, and certainly if we’re talking about 17th and 18th century Species Counterpoint, then yes, in many ways it does revolve around the keyboard. I don’t think he literally means “because of piano”, more so that it applies here because of the way it is linearly laid out, and the guitar is not. In fact, anybody that has had a college education in music would understand that the keyboard is extremely important to everything. You’ll take music theory, ear training, sight singing and functional piano. In this case I understand what millionrainbows is saying.

I think in the abstract what he means is the keyboard is extremely important if we’re talking about that kind of music theory. I’ve also studied classical guitar on the University level and none of that really has a lot to do with rock guitar. Of course it’s all the same stuff intervals, chord spellings, scales, modes Etc. The difference is more in the approach and the type of music we are discussing. My first year of college I went to a music college that was far more Jazz oriented, and while we still continued with music theory and ear training, and piano it was certainly a different approach. The basics never change - the circle of fifths, scales, modes, tonality, it’s more of an approach depending on the type of music you’re talking about.

And for the record, I don’t think this guy is trolling at all and I don’t think he’s wrong to feel attacked because there have been numerous people in this thread who have very clearly been condescending and talked down to him. I can understand why he’s annoyed.

Carry on.

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Wow, thank you Skye. That’s rare.:+1:

There is something I have tried in regards of tabs VS staff notation.

Tabs are more “geographical”, staff notation si more sound/interval oriented. I often “ear” the influence of guitar pro in guitarist’s composition, based on familiar patterns and methods that over-populate the guitar music.

I’ve always dreamed, has a guitar player, of being able to ear sounds in my head and seamlessly reproduce them on guitar. But because we have several places on the neck for a single pitch, we cannot possibly make a direct link between staff notation and the way it is played on our instrument. Fingering information all over the staff is just too crowded, and not easily memorable.

So I’ve tried one thing: using staff notation and coloring the note’s heads according to the string it is played on.

image

Unfortunately, today’s softwares make editing those transcription very tedious, so I gave up the endeavor 2 years ago.

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I can say when I played classical guitar and read a lot of classical guitar sheet music, I got really used to such info around the staff, and although it can really get ‘crowded’, I consider classical guitar notation quite useful most of the time. And guitar tabs never were my thing, they seem inconvenient and incomplete to me.

I once had exactly the same idea. :slight_smile:

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The caveat though is classical guitar notation is mostly picking hand notation, and not fretting hand, correct?

I think tab makes sense for fairly technical guitar music, where in some cases the physical manner something is laid out on the fretboard becomes hugely important - things like, oh, a Satriani legato solo, where the exact sequence of hammers and slides and the decision to play a certain section of a phrase along a single string vs including notes on adjascent strings, etc, and how that can become a very disatinctive part of his playing approach… Or the exact fretboard positioning of a Yngwie sweep arpeggio… or Eddie’s famous tapping patterns… Some of that stuff would lose a lot of really critical informaiton about how to execute it if you were to present it in standard notation only.

However, the flip side is, given a fairly decent technical aptitude, and a strong knowledge of standard notation, you SHOULD be able to see it on the staff and “hear” it and be able to sight-read reasonably smoothly. I myself certainly can’t, my standard notation is WAY too rusty, but one of the things this concersation plus spending some time with some Punch Brothers parts in standard notation has really driven home is that standard notation is actually an extremely efficient method of conveying information, simply by knowing what key you’re in (thanks to the key signature) because the staff corresponds to scale degrees you can move along pretty smoothly in a scale just by following the contour of notes on the staff.

It’s really something I should brush up on - I have some jazz fake books as well as the Bach 2 and 3 part inventions I ought to pull out and work through.

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Well, not really, at least in my experience. String and position indications are fairly common.

With notation in general, and it’s not always obvious to folks, the more annotation, the more restriction and vice versa. Hence the tablature feeling restrictive to more advanced players that may have a better sense than the transcriber of what’s what or what’s desired.

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