identifying scales?

[irrelevance]

Here's a simple one for the more musically aware folks here. How does one normally go about identifying a new scale? I'm aware of the interval relationships of major and minor, pentatonic and some of the church modes although there are many more exotic scales that I normally need to look up. I have been using a scale based on C which is C, C#, D#, F, F#,G#,A# which sounds nice to my ears. Is there already such a scale named (I'm sure there must be) and if there is how would I find out what it is without pouring through reference manuals. Is there some kind of intervalic relationship calculation I could use to make referenceing easier? I guess there is a possibility that some scales that aren't named and so some scales may just remain unnamed?

The question some may have would be; why do you need to have a name for the scale? Well when I write a track I like to reference the key, scale and chords used and it's a little easier to write a scale name rather than what I have just written out above. Or When writing a track having a referenced scale with all chord possibilities can make the writing process quicker as interval relationships aren't second nature to me.

anyway I look forward to hearing some thoughts on this.

thanks

[Mr Arkadin]

Huge topic, but in equal temperament it is easier to represent your scale as:

STTSTTT (where T=Tone, S=Semitone).

That might make it easier to find a name for. Maybe there's an iPhone App that will do it for you

[Janni]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_mode

[Mr Arkadin]

Looks like Locrian is the winner!

[dawman]

Most adults must become serious and mature responsibly to adapt to whatever part of society they have a role in, father, husband, fireman, criminal...etc. But, with music as silly as this sounds, having the memories of childhood are incredibly helpful. Especially when your memory is concerned. The sound of musics' Do-Ra-Me, and many Disney movie themes are incredibly helpful like Persian Cat named Inclomat, the old German song Tannenbaum, the Italian Tarintella, I could mention many, many more.
Since I was a child when I first started playing I was surprised when I went to my first year of the Conservatory that they used such memories for us to associate scale and pitch with. It is a vital part of interval training.
Just think of songs from your particular culture that are embedded in your memory and then dissect them as you associate them to intervals or scales.
Whats really amazing is that this also helps create good relative pitch, which is better than perfect pitch IMHO.
When you can play a cluster of notes a couple of octaves below A440 and pick their pitch, you are well on your way.
After this becomes easy the math side of things and interval association like half diminshed, whole tone, etc. Becomes as normal as taking a dump.
This is also why some incredibly talented guys can't read a note of music.
I played with a group of radical brothers once in Gil Scott Herons band and it was a night where we were the opening act and had to cover for the headliners due to cancelled flights,etc. The Bassist and I were telling the other horn and Guitar players what scales were good to use and what keys this section was in, etc. The Guitarist was a monster and I was shocked when I told him to play a sus4 chord, and he responded....I know majors and minors and shit, but dont go talkin bout no mutha fuckin 4 chords.......... Me and the bassist were floored becasue this guy was just jumping right in on tunes that were very disonant and had no normal A _ B _ A _ C Pattern.
And you are never too old to learn. This explains better why I also am handicapped by immaturity, as I have never really grown up. I am reminded of this everyday and it doesn't bother me a bit.

[Walter]

add the B and you ' have f# major

[MD69]

an old stuff i did for myself years ago and never terminated (check attachment)

written in french but notes uses the english notation

it might include errors but could be useful

cheers

[irrelevance]

Cool! Thanks for all the replies folks!
So it's Locrian for the win!! Mr Arkadin I would love an app that would calculate scales on the fly that would be awesome!!! I do use a really useful piano scale widget from http://mudcu.be/widget. If I was lucky I might have found the right scale in the end using this tool but working backwards is difficult and a real inspiration killer.

Jimmy I have certainly missed those musical anecdotes of yours About relative vs perfect pitch. I was listening to a lecture by Robert Greenberg called understanding the fundamentals of music which I would highly recommend btw RB certainly believes that perfect pitch is more of a curse than a blessing. Actually this lecture series is great as it's delivered in a non technical format with plenty of examples from classical/modern classical and Robert Greenberg is hilarious also.

MD69 this work looks very interesting thank you very much I will see if my wife can translate although her french is not as good as her spanish. Me I'm just a dumb Brit...eh what you say?

[ARCADIOS]

exists in contemporary harmony (ARMONIA)....and can be considered as the C# Major Scale(CLIMAX)....BUT as you wrote it, you start from the 7th... also you have to rename the C to B#(which is the 7th of the climax),
and F to E# (which is the 3rd of the climax)



DO#, RE#, MI#(FA), FA#, SOL#, LA#, SI#(DO), or
C#, D#, E#(F), F#, G#, A#, B#(C)



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locrian_mode

[MD69]

Hi Irrelevance,

Don't waste your time translating from French, not worth the effort, just keep the tonality tables.

They give the scale (gamme in french), the 3 and 4 notes harmonized chords (triade and tetrade) as well as their extensions (9th, 11th 13th) for the major, minor, melodic minor and harmonic minor.

Cheers

[irrelevance]

You lot are awesome! Nice one! Time to get my head back down. Thanks

[Me$$iah]

incidentlly ..... in the music theory scales are usually written as alphabetically as possible.

The Locrian you are using would be written as

C - Db - Eb - F - Gb - Ab - Bb - C

I think it just looks nicer and more complete that way

[dante]

Whats really amazing is that this also helps create good relative pitch, which is better than perfect pitch IMHO.

Interesting...I've got perfect relative and thought it would be better to have straight perfect. That way I could identify a pitch without having to know one that came before it.

[braincell]

The question some may have would be; why do you need to have a name for the scale?

thanks

You only need to know keys if you are writing music notation for you or other musicians to read, although it would be helpful in music notion software if the program could guess what key it is in based on the notes played. Unfortunately, nobody is working on this kind of artificial intelligence as far as I know. Basically the music notion software engineers and the music sequencing engineers come from different camps so no one program is best for both notation and sequencing. Those ghettos are formed based on the limited experience and ignorance of the two different types of musicians.

[dante]

Agreed. But would you say that there is an emerging crossover movement between the 2 camps (one that will ultimately be reflected by software designers), witnessed for example in the Advent of The Avid / Avatar ( Sibelius / Protools ) marriage :

http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/custo ... IN-BN-S6-1

Quote Simon Rhodes :
"Sibelius becomes something of a translation tool, and we use it to figure out what I’ve done and reinterpret it so it can be played again by an orchestra… Pro Tools and Sibelius are tools that allow me to be more creative, by allowing me to think about the technology as little as possible.”

But if your maxim 'Its easier to do it in one program' is the cream that rises to the top, the proof found in the pudding, then we could very well see some super-all-in-one-compositional-scoring products come to market in the next few years....

[braincell]

We'll see.

[MD69]

Hi,
In fact there is some very interesting research done on the subject. Do a search on the web with "musical feature extraction" or "signal processing techniques for music transcription".

In fact the subject is a little bit more complicated then generally perceived as there is a lot of ambiguities and idiomatic construct (style dependant) which require extensive rules in expert system to "decipher" the harmony construction.

Good readings

cheers

[dante]

Exactly. How would an algorithm, for example, decide between scoring what it could be hearing as semiquavers at 120BPM or quavers at 240BPM ?

Mind you if you can pump an audiostream into a computer which can decide if its a hit :

http://uplaya.com/

..then automatically scoring it for publication / automated iTunes distribution should be a piece of cake...

[siriusbliss]

There are programs like band-in-the-box that interpret scales based on chord progressions - although it's fairly restrictive.

There's also another program that I've been involved with - yet unannounced - that has a massive matrix of scales/modes/harmonies based on incoming chord progressions. The issue is that for any one chord there are tons of optional scales based on transitions, modes, tonics, inversions, etc.

These programs are out there.

Greg

[braincell]

It ought to be able to determine note value, key signature and tempo with optional tempo changes.