Ableton Forum

I love how Stevie Wonder's famous clav line on 'Superstition' is all black notes.

I wonder if, with his visual impairment, this was a decision based on the ease of playing these easier to feel raised keys in a more percussive style. God knows what key that is.

God, enlighten this wretched heathen please?

(Actually, another ignorant question - how do the visually impaired 'read' music whilst playing..?)

beatmunga wrote:I love how Stevie Wonder's famous clav line on 'Superstition' is all black notes.

I wonder if, with his visual impairment, this was a decision based on the ease of playing these easier to feel raised keys in a more percussive style. God knows what key that is.

E-flat minor. The black keys alone give you an E-flat minor pentatonic scale.

beatmunga wrote:(Actually, another ignorant question - how do the visually impaired 'read' music whilst playing..?)

Braille music

EDIT: well, "while playing" is probably not how that goes. I guess the blind can't, erm, sight read, but rather have to read the music first and memorize it.

Please stop. Stop now. I can't take this anymore. Just transpose the fookin' thing will you.........?

Pretty please...

I just press keys arbitrarily until cool things start happening.

*bookmark*


FWIW - i like some of stringtapper's music. i'm just not sure what scale it's in.

sporkles wrote:I just press keys arbitrarily until cool things start happening.

Would you like my babies?

FWIW - i like some of stringtapper's music. i'm just not sure what scale it's in.

It's not what scale it's IN but what scale it's ON.....

this thread needs to become a complete exposition and explanation of all music theory - then perhaps we will be ready to address the original question.

ps thanks to stringtapper for explaining about the German augmented 6th. I've often heard it mentioned but never knew what it meant. Now I have a new toy in my box of tricks.

hi funken, I like what you are doing on that page. but i have a couple of points.

I think it's a bit over simplistic to say that equal temperament was introduced to suit keyboard instruments. it is just as essential to fretted instruments but more importantly it allows music that modulates freely between different keys.

It would be useful to explain the origins of the 12 tone system and the reasons for the compromises needed to create equal temperament.

As I understand it (I'm sure someone wil l correct me if I'm wrong) it was discovered by ancient greeks who noticed the consonant nature of the first and second overtones and experimented with tuning stringed instruments based on those intervals - what we now call perfect fifth and perfect octave.

they discovered the remarkable fact that if you tune up by a fifth twelve times you get to almost exactly the same note as if you tune up by one octave seven times. If only it were exactly the same everyones life would habe been a lot easier, but music would be a lot less interesting.

Just about every tuning system you ever heard of is a compromise intended to fix this discrepency in one way or another . The system of equal temperement is one such system that meets the specific goal of allowing music to be transposed into any key. by dividing the octave into twelve equal steps.

To understand what is meant by equal steps you need to know about the exponential relationship between pitch and frequency. ie a pitch distance of one octave is equal to a doubling of frequency. so equal steps are created by repeatedly multiplying the frequency of the previous step by a constant. in our case we are looking for a constant that when applied 12 times will double the frequency - in other words the twelfth root of two or aprox 1.0595.

- got to break off now - my android needs charging - finish up later

By modulate I mean to change to a different key or tonic note.

e.g. the chord sequence B7 E E7 A A7 D D7 G G7 C C7 F F7 Bb Bb7 Eb etc, cycles around all twelve major keys landing briefly on each and sounds quite natural. This is only possible because of equal temperament.

Can't type much because my tablet acts a bit like a random letter generator when it's charging.

Also I'm off to the pub soon.

funken wrote:Ok I get that last bit, 1x1.0595 =1.0595. 1.0595x1.0595= 1.1225. 1.1225x1.0595=1.1893... do this for 12 notes and the result is 2, ie an octave. So the ratio of each note to the one before or after it is always the same. Cool.

exactly. And it's another great mathematical coincidence that those numbers land close enough to natural overtone ratios to sound OK.

It's like saying "it would be great if all these near misses were actually exact coincidences" and then just deciding that it's near enough for rock and roll and getting on with it as if they were exact anyway.

Excellent! Where did you find that?

Yeah here's an image that shows the discrepancies of the various overtones in cents.




Also be careful with terms "harmonic" and "overtone." They don't mean quite the same thing. The difference is that the fundamental is also considered a harmonic, but only the components above the fundamental are called overtones.

So what that quote is calling the "seventh overtone" is actually the sixth overtone, but it's the seventh harmonic.

in college a friend of mine had a professor that assigned everyone a different topic to write about in regards to Mechanical Engineering. the students soon realized the twatwaffle was writing a book and he was using the students to write it for him. they all simply wrote "copywrite <date> blah blah" to make their work unusable. copyright your posts.