Re: Melodies move by step in any form of music?

>>>> there is a large body of music employing pentatonic scales - but
>>>> not anything smaller.
>>> If you delve into the world of songs that children learn and sing,
>>> even with different words in many cultures, you will find examples of
>>> the tone set  m_sl  as well as d_m_sl and m_sl_d as well as other
>>> three and four note tone sets that are used as scales.
> I am referring to children's songs.  These tone sets are organized by
> Zoltan Kodaly (and others) in an evolutionary order

*Pedagogic* order.  Kodaly makes no very strong assertions about the
evolution of scales at this level of simplicity.  He does suggest that
they have the range they do because children's voices can't cope with
anything more.  As a statement about the physical vocal apparatus,
this is obviously out to lunch - children can produce a very wide pitch
range.  But he may have a point in that they don't have the intellectual
capacity to organize more than a fraction of that range into a melodic
pitch set.

The idea that cultural structures like musical scales "evolve" in a way
that parallels children's intellectual development is just 19th century
racist ideology.  Kodaly was doubtless influenced by it (it would be
difficult for anybody writing in the developed world not to be) but to
his credit he seems to have tried to get past it.  (Meanwhile in the
real world, the good citizens of London have just elected a mayor who
talks about "pickaninnies".  Somebody nuke that dump, please).


> to teach music.  They seem to come from the overtone series and they
> appear to be timeless.

They can't come from any such source.  A tune that stays within a third
has neither the octave nor the fifth in it, both of which ought to have
been included first if the overtone series had anything to do with it.

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