"Neil" <nhmiller@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:284e873c-86a5-48da-a18c-f1e03b83bfdb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Feb 12, 6:59�am, "David Webber" <d...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>> Scales are only scales - finger exercises. �They have
>> little other significance.
> You can't be the author of a music book
I'm not...
> and actually mean that.
...and I do.
> I
> apologize for my tone, but please don't profess such things -- someone
> might believe you!
And so they should. I thought I had distinguished sufficiently clearly
between the collection of notes which are diatonic in a given key, and a
scale.
> I've had 100s of start-over students come to me who could not identify
what key the music is in, and then they wonder why it takes them so
long to learn a piece and can't memorize it. Understanding how scales
are generated based on the interval of a fifth, and how they sonically
and structurally relate to each other is essential to being a
musician.<
Basing scales on an interval of a 5th, is not a good way to go, especially
if you're interested in the relation****p between them. Temperament
always
comes in at an early stage if you start doing that, and very soon you're
on
a long digression, which for a beginner is much better postponed to a
later
stage.
Of course the (tempered) 5th does become very im****tant in the
relation****p
between *keys* for example for modulation via V-I cadences, but that is
all
to do with harmony and not so much to do with scales.
Identifying the key of a (tonal) piece is to do with the collection of
notes
it uses and how it uses them. This is true whether they proceed in step
for
long passages or not, and therefore has nothing intrinsically to do with
"scales".
[Scales, major, minor, chromatic, whole tone, pentatonic, blues, ... do
however form very useful finger exercises for programming one's brain to
cope with short (or longer) sequences of notes in step when encounterd in
music. (I speak from experience with woodwind, but I'm sure it's true
more
generally.) To cope with sequences of notes not in step, the arpeggii
are
what you need to practice, and complement scales nicely.]
>David, you would benefit greatly from what you would learn by reading
my book's
PART III THE OUTLINE OF MUSIC
An introduction to essential theory and its im****tance to musician****p<
I don't think you know me well enough to judge what I would benefit from.
So please forgive me if I doubt it, and instead recommend to you: "The AB
guide to music theory" by Eric Taylor, which is an authoritative,
affordable, and very readable introduction to the subject (in which I
have
no personal interest).
Dave
--
David Webber
Author of 'Mozart the Music Processor'
http://www.mozart.co.uk
For discussion/sup****t see
http://www.mozart.co.uk/mozartists/mailinglist.htm
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