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The discovery and organization of consonant and dissonant tones brought about a variety of tonal relationships which gave birth to a variety of tuning systems including our current notion of scales.
A scale is simply a series of tonal relationships consisting of consonant and dissonant tones. Regardless of the tuning system one is using, notes and scales are the fundamental elements of every tuning system.
Some of the tuning systems which have existed in the West include Pythagorean Intonation, Mean-Tone, Just Intonation, Well Temperament, and Equal Temperament.
In Western music, the basic building blocks of composition come from the Equal Temperament system (A=440 Hz), its 12 notes, and their frequencies.
To illustrate what tones (or specific frequencies) are allowable within the Equal Temperament system, look up the frequencies of the Equal-Tempered scale. As you look over the chart notice how the column listing frequencies show “gaps” between the notes. Even though the frequencies between the allowable notes are themselves tones and in another tuning system may qualify as notes, in Equal Temperament they are simply discounted frequencies and unused sonic material.
Every musician is capable of broadening their compositional approach to include an expanded definition of what a note is and how many notes a scale can be comprised of.
To all intents and purposes, a note is any frequency that can be produced by a musical instrument and heard by the human ear. And a scale is any quantity of notes which have been designated or selected for use in a given musical context.
So a note is any tone which exists in the acoustic range of human hearing from 20Hz to 20kHz and a scale is any series of notes allowed to be used for a musical composition, whether it consists of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 12 notes.
Adjusting your musical framework to incorporate these ideas into your own compositional approach will compel you to invent your own scales, experiment with alternate tunings, string tensions, and a variety of scale sizes because the limit of what can be formed into music isn't dictated by ancient texts and musical scholars, but by the range of human hearing (every frequency from 20Hz to 20,000 Hz).
An artist not only creates with existing materials, but is also capable of manufacturing the very materials with which they create. If the painter can manufacture their own pigments by extracting color from flowers and the juices of brilliant fruits and the dancer can choreograph movements limited only by how well they can make the human body flex, then the musician can experiment with performing feats of tuning and inventing scales.
Ultimately, music is merely intelligently organized sound wave frequencies. Therefore, any system or set of tones can be utilized for the purpose of composing music.
The challenge then for musicians is to expand the range of frequencies with which one works. In doing so you'll discover consonant musical sounds in surprising ways as well as exotic forms of beauty by taming the dissonance of odd tunings.
So in the end, the dividing line between what music is, and is not, is determined by whether or not it is organized by an entity possessed of intelligence as opposed to a random collection of sounds and noise.
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Related Music:
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Related Articles:
Hook and Earworms
Music and Trance States of Mind
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Marc
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