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Minor second. A semitone, also called a minor second, half step, or a half tone, [3] is the smallest musical interval commonly used in Western tonal music, [4] and it is considered the most dissonant [5] when sounded harmonically.
For example, C to D (major second) is a step, whereas C to E (major third) is a skip. More generally, a step is a smaller or narrower interval in a musical line, and a skip is a wider or larger interval with the categorization of intervals into steps and skips is determined by the tuning system and the pitch space used.
The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone, also known as a half-step, above or below its adjacent pitches. As a result, in 12-tone equal temperament (the most common tuning in Western music), the chromatic scale covers all 12 of the available pitches. Thus, there is only one chromatic scale.
In post-tonal or atonal theory, originally developed for equal-tempered European classical music written using the twelve-tone technique or serialism, integer notation is often used, most prominently in musical set theory. In this system, intervals are named according to the number of half steps, from 0 to 11, the largest interval class being 6.
This pattern of whole and half steps characterizes the natural minor scales. The intervals between the notes of a natural minor scale follow the sequence below: whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole. where "whole" stands for a whole tone (a red u-shaped curve in the figure), and "half" stands for a semitone (a red angled line in the ...
Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are used to characterize scales. The terms are also applied to musical instruments, intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. They are very often used as a pair, especially when applied to contrasting features of the common practice music of the period 1600–1900. [a]
In music theory a diatonic scale is a heptatonic (seven-note) scale that includes five whole steps (whole tones) and two half steps (semitones) in each octave, in which the two half steps are separated from each other by either two or three whole steps. In other words, the half steps are maximally separated from each other.
Half-steps are indicated by slur marks, other notes are separated by whole steps. The descending melodic minor scale shown has the same order of half steps and whole steps as the ascending major scale. Riemannian theory, in general, refers to the musical theories of German theorist Hugo Riemann (1849–1919).
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