>>60774813
to get to the other side

>>60774823
not trying to do a riddle or whatever, i seriously need to know why each note has as many sharps/flats as it does

>>60774842
Every scale in a major key has to follow the pattern of: whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step.

The sharps and flats are added to fit this pattern

>>60774887
thinking about it though, op's question might have some validity to it. C is the "base" key that everything else is in relation to. Couldn't A have been made that instead? The only reason C has no sharps or flats is because E# is just F and B# is just C. You could just as easily move around names of those notes and get a musical system that starts at A

>>60774925
Because C is Do in the european system and is the first note, is only logical

>>60774984
That's my point though. Why is C Do in the European system? Couldn't A have just as easily been Do? Modern musical notation was developed at a point where western musical tradition was pretty established, so it's not like this happened by coincidence. It was built around C being the most neutral key.

answer incoming wait

>>60774842
>not trying to do a riddle or whatever, i seriously need to know why each note has as many sharps/flats as it does

HOW STUFF WORKS
What we currently used is called 12 edo, or 12 divisions of octave with A4 being 440hz.

Sound has frequencies that are numbers higher than 0, humans usually listen to frequencies betwen 20 and 20000 hz.
The first keys of piano have smaller frequencies and it increase as you move throught the keys.

Ther are infinite frequencies and the piano cant have all, since each key is just one frequency, some instruments allow

"infinite frequencies" (with a min and max frequency),they are called Continuous pitch instruments and some examples are

fretless guitar, trombone and violin.

As you see we cant have all frequencies and so we must selct what frequency we can have.

What frequencies we selected was based on some rules:

RULE 1: To each frequency you must have a piano key (or other instrument equivalent) that has the frequency value 2x higher

than the other piano key frequency.
The reason this rule was selected to be a rule, was that, you dont just play one piano key (or equivalent on other

instrument) at the same time. And playing a frequency Y at the same time of a frequency of 2Y is considered to sound good.

RULE 2: The frequency of a piano key is 1.5 times the frequency of the previous piano key.
The reason why this was selected to be a rule I dont know (someone here explain this if they know).

But now the second rule doenst work together with the first one.

>>60775442
come back, this is bugging the fuck out of me

>>60776005
Imagine a frequency of 1hz, after it you would have (as rule 2 says) the frequency of 1.5 and then the frequency of 2.25.
But wait, and the frequency of 2hz (that is 2x times the frequency of 1hz)? the rule 1 says we need this frequency.

Based on this problem they came with something that almost solve this problem:
Imagine you have the frequency of Y and 2Y.

Under the new formula, the frequencies wouldnt be 1.5 times the previous one, the frequencies betwen Y and 2Y would be Z

times the previous frequency, z depends on the amount of piano keys you want between Y and and 2Y.

>how this solve the problem between rule 1 and 2?
Depending on the amount of keys you select to exist between piano key Y and the one with frequency 2Y, you will be able to

find a piano key that will have a frequency CLOSE to 1.5Y, it wont be the next piano key after Y, but it will be there.

As some example under the current tuning we use A4 is 440hz and 440 * 1.5 is equal to 660, the value of E5 is equal 659.255

that is pretty close to 660.


Before comming with this idea, presented here, of fixing the problem with rules one and 1, they came with other ideas, based

on those other ideas, the amount of piano keys selected to exist between Y and 2Y (including Y) was 7.

To represent them letters, were used, the first one was A, the second one was B and this goes on until G. After it we have

numbers, integer ones, if A4 is 440, A5 will be 2x times A4 tthat is 880, A4 is 2x times A3 and so A3 is 220.

For some reason (that i dont know) they decided after that instead of symbols going from A to G, it goes from C to G and then after G ther is A and then there is B.

After some amount of time, they decided increase the amount of notes between Y and 2Y, but to make stuff compatible with

>>60776017
previous system (A to G), they decided to not add more letter (h....) and instead decided to do a different thing.
The symbol # already existed and still exist, and means the note after, so E#4 would mean F#4.
But now they added as some example some new note betwen C and D, now C# means this new note and not D, but C## would means D.

>what formula they used to decide where each new note would go?
I dont know, ask someone else.
This also influencied the fact we have the black keys on piano, to fit with old stuff.

Now, remember the currently usedly formula to fix the problem between rule 1 and 2? Tuning systems (ways of deciding what

frequencies the instrument will have) that follow this formula are called equal temperament.

Anyway, to find the amount keys between Y and 2Y are needed to make sure you have a frequency somewhere that is close to

1.5Y:
You get the value (1.5)^W where W means the amount of notes between Y and 2Y (including Y)
Then you divide by 2 until you have a number between 1 and 2.
How close the result is to 1 is how good using W as the amount of notes will be.

But there is a problem yOu can always find some better value of W if you continue testing numbers.
This related with another problem. As some example, use 53 as the value of W is better than all previous values smaller than

53, but according to many, the usual piano would become too large if you use 53 as the value of W.

So, you have the third rule:
RULE 3: After X keys the usual piano become too large.

But you also have to deal with min and max frequency you want to have on usual piano, if you just want to have the

frequencies between 100 and 300, using 53 as the value of w would still lead to a small piano.
Based on it you need another rule RULE 4

>>60776028
RULE 4: THe min frequency the piano will represent is Y and the max Frequency the piano will represent is Z.
Some would say: "just use 20 to Y and 20000 to Z since they are the the average min and max frequencies people can hear"
The thing is at some frequencies the piano start to lose quality, because of the way the piano work., so Y was not selected

to be 20 and Z is not 20000 and thats why the piano dont cover the entire audible range.

Based on all that 12 was selected to be the value of W.


Right now with all that info, we can create a formula that we use to see what frequency some specific note on piano will

have, the formula become

frequency a note will have is = z * ( 2 ^ (n/2))

but we need to have the value of Z what is this value?

People used widely differnt values, and at some point at early 1900s scientists where called to decided a value for Z.
The value decided was A4 being 439, but this instrument makers were having a hard time to create instruments with value of Z

with the tech of the era, so they complained and the value was changed to A4 being 440

Now the formula is 440 * ( 2 ^ (n/2))
with n being note, and its 0 when the note is A4.

>>60776042
PS: as you see all rules that form 12 edo are abritraty
The 440 as the value of Z is even more abritraty because it was selected to be 439 and then it was changed because they didnt had tech to do it at the time (but now we HAVE IT).
So if you use 440 instead of 439, you are actually saying some mistake is better than the real decided thing.

If I was a better coder (or maybe better at math) I would create a program wher you select the new value instead of 440, the new value instead of 2x, and the replacement for 5x, amount of keys on piano before it become too large and etc... and it would decide the amount of notes to you is the desired one

>>60776150
So... are these instructions for a piano in any key?!

It's a circle. Circles don't start or end at any specific point.

C is a key without any accidentals in the key signature
this is a result of a lot of history and science of the harmonies involved
all major scales involve the same relationships of pitches
because of the way we've named our system, in the key of C these relationships are correct without any accidentals
the pattern of steps between scale degrees that i'm talking about is:
1 - whole - 2 - whole - 3 - half - 4 - whole - 5 - whole - 6 - whole - 7 - half - 8
so if you don't apply accidentals to any notes at all, C major is the only key that fits this pattern

>>60776396
for example, to make a scale that starts on G fit this pattern, you need to change notes.
without accidentals, the scale would be
G A B C D E F G
if we follow through with the pattern of whole steps and half steps, everything works until we get to the F. there is supposed to be a whole step between degrees 6 and 7 and a half step between 7 and 8. so just make degree 7 a half step higher. that's why there's an F# in g major

>>60776343
this.

>>60776396
dont even get me started on 440hz standard

here op this shit might help
http://forum.bandamp.com/Announcements/30000.html
but seriously C is no sharps or flats how difficult is it to understand

>>60775093
Theoretically it's all arbitrary. You could have called D# a B and have that be the central neutral point at which the circle of fifths and all other theory behins. However, somebody liked C and went from there.

Chances are it has more to do with modern theory having roots in classical which is relatively piano based. In the dead center of a piano is a C, so that's probably why it was assumed most neutral and a good starting point.

>>60776343
/thread