1.
Music of China
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Music of China refers to the music of the Chinese people, which may be the music of the Han Chinese as well as other ethnic minorities within mainland China. It also includes music produced by people of Chinese origin in some territories outside mainland China using traditional Chinese instruments or in the Chinese language and it covers a highly diverse range of music from the traditional to the modern. These further developed into forms of music through succeeding dynasties. Chinese music continues to evolve in the times, and more contemporary forms have also emerged. A twelve-tone musical system was created based on the pitches of the pipes, and the first of these pipes produced the yellow bell pitch. Archaeological evidence indicates that music culture developed in China from an early period. During the Zhou Dynasty, a system of court and ceremonial music later termed yayue was established. The word dance similarly also refers to music, and every dance would have have a piece of associated with it. The most important set of music of the period was the Six-dynasty Music Dance performed in rituals in the royal court, correct music according to Zhou concept would involve instruments correlating to the five elements of nature and would bring harmony to nature. Around or before the 7th century BC, a system of pitch generation, Chinese philosophers took varying approaches to music. Some popular forms of music, however, were considered corrupting in the Confucian view, mozi on the other hand condemned music, and argued in Against Music that music is an extravagance and indulgence that serves no useful purpose and may be harmful. According to Mencius, a powerful ruler once asked him whether it was if he preferred popular music to the classics. The answer was that it mattered that the ruler loved his subjects. In ancient China the social status of musicians was much lower than that of painters, though music was seen as central to the harmony, almost every emperor took folk songs seriously, sending officers to collect songs to record the popular culture. One of the Confucianist Classics, Shi Jing 詩經, contained many folk songs dating from 800 BC to about 400 BC, in subsequent dynasties, the development of Chinese music was strongly influenced by the musical traditions of Central Asia. The oldest extant written Chinese music is Youlan or the Solitary Orchid, composed during the 6th or 7th century, but has also been attributed to Confucius. The first major well-documented flowering of Chinese music was for the qin during the Tang Dynasty, through succeeding dynasties over thousands of years, Chinese musicians developed a large assortment of different instruments and playing styles. A wide variety of instruments, such as guzheng and dizi are indigenous, although many popular traditional musical instruments were introduced from Central Asia, such as the erhu
2.
Music of India
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The music of India includes multiple varieties of Indian classical music, folk music, Filmi and Indian pop. Indias classical music tradition, including Hindustani music and Carnatic, has a history spanning millennia, Music in India began as an integral part of socio-religious life. The basic concepts of music includes shruti, swaras, alankar, raga. Its tonal system divides the octave into 22 segments called shrutis, not all equal, the Hindustani music tradition diverged from Carnatic music around the 13th-14th centuries CE. The practice of singing based on notes was popular even from the Vedic times where the hymns in Sama Veda, developing a strong and diverse tradition over several centuries, it has contemporary traditions established primarily in India but also in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Classical genres are dhrupad, dhamar, khyal, tarana and sadra, the present of Carnatic music can be traced to the 14th - 15th centuries AD and thereafter. It originated in South India during the rule of Vijayanagar Empire, like Hindustani music, it is melodic, with improvised variations, but tends to have more fixed compositions. It consists of a composition with improvised embellishments added to the piece in the forms of Raga Alapana, Kalpanaswaram, Neraval and, in the case of advanced students, Raga, Tala. The main emphasis is on the vocals as most compositions are written to be sung, there are about 7.2 million ragas in Carnatic Music, with around 300 still in use today. Every December, the city of Chennai in India has its eight-week-long Music Season, Carnatic music has served as the foundation for most music in South India, including folk music, festival music and has also extended its influence to film music in the past 100–150 years or so. Light classical or semi-classical, among others, Thumri, Dadra, Ghazal, Chaiti, Kajri and Tappa, Rabindra Sangeet, also known as Tagore songs, are songs written and composed by Rabindranath Tagore. They have distinctive characteristics in the music of Bengal, popular in India, Sangeet means music, Rabindra Sangeet means music of Rabindra. Rabindra Sangeet used Indian classical music and traditional music as sources. Rabindranath Tagore was a figure in Indian music. Many singers in West Bengal and Bangladesh base their careers on the singing of Tagore musical masterpieces. The national anthem of India and national anthem of Bangladesh are Rabindra Sangeets, bihu is the festival of New Year of Assam falling on mid April. This is a festival of nature and mother earth where the first day is for the cows, second day is for the man. Bihu dances and songs accompanied by drums and wind instruments are essential part of this festival
3.
20th-century music
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During the 20th century there was a vast increase in the variety of music that people had access to. The 20th-century orchestra was far more flexible than its predecessors and used a wider variety of instruments. In Beethovens and Felix Mendelssohns time in the 19th century, the orchestra was composed of a standard core of instruments which was very rarely modified. The 20th century saw dramatic innovations in musical forms and styles, composers and songwriters experimented with new musical styles, such as genre fusions. As well, composers and musicians used new electric, electronic, in the 1980s, some styles of music, such as electronic dance music genres such as house music were created largely with synthesizers and drum machines. Faster modes of such as jet flight allowed musicians and fans to travel more widely to perform or hear shows. Busoni, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Schreker were already recognized before 1914 as modernists, composers such as Ravel, Milhaud, and Gershwin combined classical and jazz idioms. Late-Romantic and modernist nationalism was also in British, American. Composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Aaron Copland, Carlos Chávez, in the middle of the century composers such as Harry Partch and Ben Johnston explored just intonation. There were three schools of neoclassicism, associated with Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, and Arnold Schoenberg. Similar sympathies in the half of the century are generally subsumed under the heading postmodernism. A compositional tradition arose in the mid-20th century—particularly in North America—called experimental music and its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage. According to Cage, an action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen. Minimalist music, involving a simplification of materials and intensive repetition of motives began in the late 1950s with the composers Terry Riley, Steve Reich, later, minimalism was adapted to a more traditional symphonic setting by composers including Reich, Glass, and John Adams. For more examples see List of 20th-century classical composers, contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s to early 1990s, which includes modernist, postmodern, neoromantic, and pluralist music. However, the term may also be employed in a sense to refer to all post-1945 musical forms. Many composers working in the early 21st century were prominent figures in the 20th century, some younger composers such as Oliver Knussen, Thomas Adès, and Michael Daugherty did not rise to prominence until late in the 20th century. For more examples see List of 21st-century classical composers, in the early twentieth century, electronic devices were invented that were capable of generating sound electronically, without an initial mechanical source of vibration
4.
Diatonic and chromatic
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They are very often used as a pair, especially when applied to contrasting features of the common practice music of the period 1600–1900. These terms may mean different things in different contexts, very often, diatonic refers to musical elements derived from the modes and transpositions of the white note scale C–D–E–F–G–A–B. In some usages it includes all forms of scale that are in common use in Western music. Chromatic most often refers to structures derived from the chromatic scale, in ancient Greece there were three standard tunings of a lyre. These three tunings were called diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic, and the sequences of four notes that they produced were called tetrachords, a diatonic tetrachord comprised, in descending order, two whole tones and a semitone, such as A G F E. In the chromatic tetrachord the second string of the lyre was lowered from G to G♭, in the enharmonic tetrachord the tuning had two quarter tone intervals at the bottom, A G F E. For all three tetrachords, only the two strings varied in their pitch. The term cromatico was occasionally used in the Medieval and Renaissance periods to refer to the coloration of certain notes, in works of the Ars Nova from the 14th century, this was used to indicate a temporary change in metre from triple to duple, or vice versa. This usage became common in the 15th century as open white noteheads became the standard notational form for minims. These uses for the word have no relationship to the meaning of chromatic. The term chromatic began to approach its modern usage in the 16th century, Medieval theorists defined scales in terms of the Greek tetrachords. The gamut was the series of pitches from which all the Medieval scales notionally derive, the origin of the word gamut is explained at the article Hexachord, here the word is used in one of the available senses, the all-encompassing gamut as described by Guido dArezzo. The intervals from one note to the next in this Medieval gamut are all tones or semitones, recurring in a pattern with five tones. The semitones are separated as much as they can be, between alternating groups of three tones and two tones, here are the intervals for a string of ascending notes from the gamut. This would include the major scale, and the minor scale. There are specific applications in the music of the Common Practice Period, most, but not all writers, accept the natural minor as diatonic. Among such theorists there is no agreed general term that encompasses the major, inclusive usage Some writers consistently include the melodic and harmonic minor scales as diatonic also. For this group, every scale standardly used in common practice music, mixed usage Still other writers mix these two meanings of diatonic, and this can lead to confusions and misconceptions
5.
Pythagorean tuning
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Pythagorean tuning is a tuning of the syntonic temperament in which the generator is the ratio 3,2, which is 702 cents wide. Hence, it is a system of tuning in which the frequency ratios of all intervals are based on the ratio 3,2. This ratio, also known as the perfect fifth, is chosen because it is one of the most consonant and easiest to tune by ear. As Novalis put it, The musical proportions seem to me to be particularly correct natural proportions, the so-called Pythagorean tuning was used by musicians up to the beginning of the 16th century. The Pythagorean system would appear to be ideal because of the purity of the fifths, Pythagorean tuning is based on a stack of intervals called perfect fifths, each tuned in the ratio 3,2, the next simplest ratio after 2,1. Since notes differing in frequency by a factor of 2 are given the same name, the purpose of this adjustment is to move the 12 notes within a smaller range of frequency, namely within the interval between the base note D and the D above it. This interval is called the basic octave. For instance, the A is tuned such that its frequency equals 3,2 times the frequency of D—if D is tuned to a frequency of 288 Hz, then A is tuned to 432 Hz. Similarly, the E above A is tuned such that its frequency equals 3,2 times the frequency of A, or 9,4 times the frequency of D—with A at 432 Hz, this puts E at 648 Hz. Since this E is outside the basic octave, it is usual to halve its frequency to move it within the basic octave. Therefore, E is tuned to 324 Hz, a 9,8 above D, the B at 3,2 above that E is tuned to the ratio 27,16 and so on. This frequency is doubled to bring it into the basic octave. When extending this tuning however, a problem arises, no stack of 3,2 intervals will fit exactly into any stack of 2,1 intervals. For instance a stack such as this, obtained by adding one note to the stack shown above A♭–E♭–B♭–F–C–G–D–A–E–B–F♯–C♯–G♯ will be similar. More exactly, it will be about a quarter of a semitone larger, thus, A♭ and G♯, when brought into the basic octave, will not coincide as expected. This discrepancy, of about 23.46 cents, or nearly one quarter of a semitone, is known as a Pythagorean comma, to get around this problem, Pythagorean tuning constructs only twelve notes as above, with eleven fifths between them. For example, one may use only the 12 notes from E♭ to G♯. This, as shown above, the remaining interval is left badly out-of-tune, meaning that any music which combines those two notes is unplayable in this tuning. A very out-of-tune interval such as one is known as a wolf interval
6.
Musical tuning
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In music, there are two common meanings for tuning, Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice. Tuning systems, the systems of pitches used to tune an instrument. Tuning is the process of adjusting the pitch of one or many tones from musical instruments to establish typical intervals between these tones, Tuning is usually based on a fixed reference, such as A =440 Hz. Out of tune refers to a pitch/tone that is too high or too low in relation to a given reference pitch. While an instrument might be in relative to its own range of notes. Some instruments become out of tune with damage or time and must be readjusted or repaired, different methods of sound production require different methods of adjustment, Tuning to a pitch with ones voice is called matching pitch and is the most basic skill learned in ear training. Turning pegs to increase or decrease the tension on strings so as to control the pitch, instruments such as the harp, piano, and harpsichord require a wrench to turn the tuning pegs, while others such as the violin can be tuned manually. Modifying the length or width of the tube of an instrument, brass instrument, pipe, bell. The sounds of instruments such as cymbals are inharmonic—they have irregular overtones not conforming to the harmonic series. Tuning may be done aurally by sounding two pitches and adjusting one of them to match or relate to the other, a tuning fork or electronic tuning device may be used as a reference pitch, though in ensemble rehearsals often a piano is used. Symphony orchestras and concert bands tend to tune to an A or a B♭, respectively, interference beats are used to objectively measure the accuracy of tuning. As the two approach a harmonic relationship, the frequency of beating decreases. When tuning a unison or octave it is desired to reduce the beating frequency until it cannot be detected, for other intervals, this is dependent on the tuning system being used. Harmonics may be used to facilitate tuning of strings that are not themselves tuned to the unison, for example, lightly touching the highest string of a cello at the middle while bowing produces the same pitch as doing the same a third of the way down its second-highest string. The resulting unison is more easily and quickly judged than the quality of the fifth between the fundamentals of the two strings. In music, the open string refers to the fundamental note of the unstopped. The strings of a guitar are tuned to fourths, as are the strings of the bass guitar. Violin, viola, and cello strings are tuned to fifths, however, non-standard tunings exist to change the sound of the instrument or create other playing options
7.
Twelve-tone technique
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All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key. Over time, the technique increased greatly in popularity and eventually became widely influential on 20th century composers, many important composers who had originally not subscribed to or even actively opposed the technique, such as Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky, eventually adopted it in their music. Schoenberg himself described the system as a Method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with one another and it is commonly considered a form of serialism. Schoenbergs countryman and contemporary Josef Matthias Hauer also developed a system using unordered hexachords or tropes—but with no connection to Schoenbergs twelve-tone technique. Other composers have created systematic use of the scale. The twelve tone technique was preceded by freely atonal pieces of 1908–23 which, though free, the twelve-tone technique was also preceded by nondodecaphonic serial composition used independently in the works of Alexander Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Carl Ruggles, and others. Oliver Neighbour argues that Bartók was the first composer to use a group of twelve notes consciously for a structural purpose, essentially, Schoenberg and Hauer systematized and defined for their own dodecaphonic purposes a pervasive technical feature of modern musical practice, the ostinato. In Hauers breakthrough piece Nomos, Op. Schoenbergs idea in developing the technique was for it to replace those structural differentiations provided formerly by tonal harmonies, Some of these composers extended the technique to control aspects other than the pitches of notes, thus producing serial music. Some even subjected all elements of music to the serial process, the basis of the twelve-tone technique is the tone row, an ordered arrangement of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale. There are four postulates or preconditions to the technique which apply to the row, on which a work or section is based, no note is repeated within the row. The row may be subjected to interval-preserving transformations -—that is, it may appear in inversion, retrograde, or retrograde-inversion, the row in any of its four transformations may begin on any degree of the chromatic scale, in other words it may be freely transposed. A particular transformation together with a choice of transpositional level is referred to as a set form or row form, every row thus has up to 48 different row forms. However, not all prime series will yield so many variations because transposed transformations may be identical to each other. A simple case is the chromatic scale, the retrograde inversion of which is identical to the prime form. In the above example, as is typical, the retrograde inversion contains three points where the sequence of two pitches are identical to the prime row, thus the generative power of even the most basic transformations is both unpredictable and inevitable. Motivic development can be driven by such internal consistency, note that rules 1–4 above apply to the construction of the row itself, and not to the interpretation of the row in the composition. While a row may be expressed literally on the surface as thematic material, it need not be, however, individual composers have constructed more detailed systems in which matters such as these are also governed by systematic rules. The tone row chosen as the basis of the piece is called the prime series, untransposed, it is notated as P0
8.
Altered scale
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In jazz, the altered scale or altered dominant scale is a seven-note scale that is a dominant scale where all non-essential tones have been altered. The natural forms of the tones are not present in the scale. This means it contains no major ninth, no perfect eleventh, no perfect fifth, an altered scale on C contains the notes, C, D♭ D♯ E F♯ or G♭ G♯ or A♭ B♭. This is written below in musical notation with the essential chordtones coloured black, the altered scale is made by the sequence, semitone – tone – semitone – tone – tone – tone – tone. For example, C7alt supplants C7#5♭9#9#11, C7-5+5-9+9, Caug7-9+9+11, etc, the altered scale is also enharmonically the C Locrian mode, C-D♭-E♭-F-G♭-A♭-B♭, with F changed to F♭. For this reason, the scale is sometimes called the super Locrian mode. It is also enharmonically the seventh mode of the melodic minor scale. The super locrian scale is obtained by flattening the fourth note of the diatonic Locrian mode, with a tonic of C, it is spelt, C. D♭. E♭. F♭. G♭. A♭. For example, the altered scale C-D♭-D♯-E-G♭-A♭-B♭ shares all but its A♭ with the octatonic scale C-D♭-D♯-E-F♯-G-A-B♭ and this accounts for some of its popularity in both the classical and jazz traditions. The altered scale appears sporadically in the works of Debussy and Ravel, Jazz scale Bahha, Nor Eddine, and Robert Rawlins. Jazzology, The Encyclopedia of Jazz Theory for All Musicians, edited by Barrett Tagliarino, voice-leading parsimony in the music of Alexander Scriabin, Journal of Music Theory 42, no. Scales for Jazz Improvisation, A Practice Method for All Instruments, lebanan, Indiana, Studio P/R, Miami, Warner Bros. Modal Jazz Composition & Harmony, volume 1, the Altered Scale In Jazz Improvisation. “The Consecutive-Semitone Constraint on Scalar Structure, A Link Between Impressionism and Jazz. ”Journal of Music Theory 48, super Locrian arranged for Guitar as 3 note per string and 3 octave patterns The altered scale for guitar
9.
Diatonic scale
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This pattern ensures that, in a diatonic scale spanning more than one octave, all the half steps are maximally separated from each other. The word diatonic comes from the Greek διατονικός, meaning progressing through tones, the seven pitches of any diatonic scale can be obtained using a chain of six perfect fifths. Musical keyboards are designed to play notes, and hence diatonic scales. A diatonic scale can be described as two tetrachords separated by a whole tone. The term diatonic originally referred to the genus, one of the three genera of the ancient Greeks. In musical set theory, Allen Forte classifies diatonic scales as set form 7–35 and this article does not concern alternative seven-note diatonic scales such as the harmonic minor or the melodic minor. Western music from the Middle Ages until the late 19th century is based on the diatonic scale, there is one claim that the 45, 000-year-old Divje Babe Flute uses a diatonic scale, but there is no proof or consensus it is even a musical instrument. There is evidence that the Sumerians and Babylonians used some version of the diatonic scale and this derives from surviving inscriptions that contain a tuning system and musical composition. Despite the conjectural nature of reconstructions of the known as the Hurrian songs from the surviving score. The scales corresponding to the medieval Church modes were diatonic, one of these, the one starting on B, has no pure fifth above its reference note, it is probably for this reason that it was not used. Of the six remaining scales, two were described as corresponding to two others with a B♭ instead of a B♮, A–B–C–D–E–F–G–A was described as D–E–F–G–A–B♭C–D and C–D–E–F–G–A–B–C as F–G–A–B♭–C–D–E–F, as a result, medieval theory described the Church modes as corresponding to four diatonic scales only. Heinrich Glarean considered that the modal scales including a B♭ had to be the result of a transposition, by the beginning of the Baroque period, the notion of musical key was established, describing additional possible transpositions of the diatonic scale. Major and minor scales came to dominate until at least the start of the 20th century, some Church modes survived into the early 18th century, as well as appearing occasionally in classical and 20th-century music, and later in modal jazz. Glareans six natural scales could be transposed not only to include one flat in the signature, of these six scales, three are major scales, three are minor. To these may be added the seventh diatonic scale, with a fifth above the reference note. Transposing each of seven scales on the twelve degrees of the chromatic scale results in a total of eighty-four diatonic scales. The modern musical keyboard originated as a keyboard with only lower keys. The major scale, for instance, can be represented as T–T–S–T–T–T–S or 2–2–1–2–2–2–1 The major scale or Ionian scale is one of the diatonic scales and it is made up of seven distinct notes, plus an eighth that duplicates the first an octave higher
Play (help·info)). Due to a different tuning technique, the twelve semitones in this scale have two slightly different sizes. Thus, the scale is not perfectly symmetric. Many other tuning systems, developed in the ensuing centuries, share a similar asymmetry.
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