Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to heptatonic scales, which have seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale). Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancient civilizations [ 2 ] and are still used in various musical styles to this day.
Some scales use a different number of pitches. A common scale in Eastern music is the pentatonic scale, which consists of five notes that span an octave. For example, in the Chinese culture, the pentatonic scale is usually used for folk music and consists of C, D, E, G and A, commonly known as gong, shang, jue, chi and yu. [14] [15]
This is the most common tuning system used in Western music, and is the standard system used as a basis for tuning a piano. Since this scale divides an octave into twelve equal-ratio steps and an octave has a frequency ratio of two, the frequency ratio between adjacent notes is then the twelfth root of two, 2 1/12 ≋ 1.05946309... .
Philolaus's scale thus consisted of the following intervals: 9:8, 9:8, 256:243 [these three intervals take us up a fourth], 9:8, 9:8, 9:8, 256:243 [these four intervals make up a fifth and complete the octave from our starting note]. This scale is known as the Pythagorean diatonic and is the scale that Plato adopted in the construction of the ...
The Pythagorean scale is any scale which can be constructed from only pure perfect fifths (3:2) and octaves (2:1). [5] In Greek music it was used to tune tetrachords, which were composed into scales spanning an octave. [6] A distinction can be made between extended Pythagorean tuning and a 12-tone Pythagorean temperament.
Notes can be arranged in a variety of scales and modes. Western music theory generally divides the octave into a series of twelve pitches, called a chromatic scale, within which the interval between adjacent tones is called a semitone, or half step. Selecting tones from this set of 12 and arranging them in patterns of semitones and whole tones ...
Tone clusters...on the piano [are] whole scales of tones used as chords, or at least three contiguous tones along a scale being used as a chord. And, at times, if these chords exceed the number of tones that you have fingers on your hand, it may be necessary to play these either with the flat of the hand or sometimes with the full forearm.
For instance, 660 Hz / 440 Hz (a ratio of 3:2) constitutes a fifth, and 880 Hz / 440 Hz (2:1) an octave. Such intervals (termed "just") have a stability, or purity to their sound, when played simultaneously (assuming they are played using timbres with harmonic partials) because pure intervals do not waver or beat regularly.