How many major scales are there?

[lloccmttocs]

I know this seems like a very cut and answer question but my band teacher said there are 15, which doesn't seem right, I could have sworn there were 11 maybe I lost count and there was 12 but 15??? maybe I'm overlooking something but he isn't usually wrong and I didn't want to sound stupid and yell out 11 when he said there was 15.

[TomSauter]

Your profile says you're available for instruction

[mcnaire2004]

Major scales go

Db,Ab,Eb,Bb,F,C,G,D,A,E,B. And, there technically more but aren't really used much. As far as major scales. Then there is the natural, melodic, and harmonic minors.

There is also a lidian scale or something like that (not sure) my old teacher (he's a jazz bassist) told me about or something.

[hdiddy]

Originally Posted by mcnaire2004

Major scales go

Db,Ab,Eb,Bb,F,C,G,D,A,E,B.

You forgot Gb/F#.

[Freddels]

There are 15. You have to use the enharmonic spelling for some.

[mcnaire2004]

Originally Posted by hdiddy

You forgot Gb/F#.

LOL forgot. I was talking about the ones people use.

[jazzbassnerd]

um, Gb isn't used??

[Freddels]

Originally Posted by jazzbassnerd

um, Gb isn't used??

Only on special holidays.

[Kam]

I'm giving up playing in Gb Major for Lent this year.

I'm pretty sure it will kick me into a lower tax bracket. Oh wait...I can't go any lower...this is a bad idea.

[Justin K-ski]

Theoretically there are an infinite number of majors scales. A major scales can be defined as any series of stepwise notes following the whole/half step pattern of W-W-h-W-W-W-h. If someone tries to claim that F# and Gb are exactly the same note they are wrong.

Say I'm a composer and a write a peice in C# major, and I modulate to the V. Now I'm in G# major, which is certianly an awakward key but a key none the less. I'm sure some contemporary composers write music in F double sharp major.

[Bassist4Life]

15.

[jallenbass]

You could make the argument that there is one major scale and it can be played in any key.

[rprowse]

Originally Posted by Bassist4Life

15.

Yes, and I'm the Pope. (Si, e io sono il papa... in the language of music)

C C#/Db D D#/Eb E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab A A#/Bb B = 12
If you want to count the enharmonic ones, that's 17
If you want to count B#/Cb E#/Fb, then there's 19
If you want to count CX (C double sharp) Bbbect., well I think that's just being silly.
I'll stick with 12.
You'd be better spending your time watching the youtube video clip of Joe Pass & NHOP.

[Bassist4Life]

Originally Posted by rprowse

Yes, and I'm the Pope. (Si, e io sono il papa... in the language of music)

C C#/Db D D#/Eb E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab A A#/Bb B = 12
If you want to count the enharmonic ones, that's 17
If you want to count B#/Cb E#/Fb, then there's 19
If you want to count CX (C double sharp) Bbbect., well I think that's just being silly.
I'll stick with 12.
You'd be better spending your time watching the youtube video clip of Joe Pass & NHOP.

Um, okay... There are 15 major scales, our ears hear 12. My answer is based on what I learned in college. I got my degree in music education. I'm an orchestra director and my students have a scale checklist that includes all 15 major scales. It's fun to talk about all the enharmonic options for scales and how a major scale is a formula that could be built off an infinite number of pitches; but at the end of the day, there are 15.

Let us not anger the gods of music theory.
Joe

PS. This is really strange, but how in the world did you know that I absolutely dig Joe Pass & NHOP?!

[jazzbassnerd]

Originally Posted by Justin K-ski

Theoretically there are an infinite number of majors scales. A major scales can be defined as any series of stepwise notes following the whole/half step pattern of W-W-h-W-W-W-h. If someone tries to claim that F# and Gb are exactly the same note they are wrong.

Say I'm a composer and a write a peice in C# major, and I modulate to the V. Now I'm in G# major, which is certianly an awakward key but a key none the less. I'm sure some contemporary composers write music in F double sharp major.

I don't think that there's an infinite number of major scales, because the major scale is a western classical thing which means that there are 12 notes, and 12 major scales, 15 if you count some enharmonics, but if played in tune in the dominant western tuning system (equal tempered) we will only hear 12. Yes, if you are in C# and modulate to V you are in G# major, but to the listener it might as well be Db going to Ab. I am unaware of anyone, even with absolute pitch, that can distinguish between F# and Gb. F# and Gb are actually exactly the same in an equal tempered tuning system, which is probably what we've all played all our music in. Before equal temperament, though, you are very correct Gb and F# would be sound as different keys ... the distances between all half steps would not be even.

I would also contest that most contemporary composers don't write in keys nor key signatures and I rarely see double sharps or flats in contemporary music because those are really only useful in helping to denote a key center of some sort. I also find that a majority of contemporary composers are interested in making their music as easy as possible to read, which would mean they'd write an Ab.

As far as microtonality is concerned ... no one writes in F quarter sharp major, it would defeat the purpose, tune to a different A.

I wonder how many major scales Harry Partch had in his 43 tone to the octave system?

[Jeremy Allen]

Originally Posted by jazzbassnerd

I don't think that there's an infinite number of major scales

I think what Justin is pointing out is that that the major scale is simply a collection of intervals which could begin on any one of an infinite number of frequencies. Some of us say A=440, but that's a completely arbitrary frequency (it used to be 415, and it's been creeping upwards for the past couple of hundred years); the number of possible frequencies is naturally infinite, hence so is the number of possible major scales. Theoretically, as he said.

But I only make my students learn twelve major scales, and they can enjoy the three or so common enharmonic spellings when they saw away through Simandl.

PS Although we do live in an equal-tempered world, we string players (and wind players) who can adjust the pitch accordingly do not play in equal-tempered tuning except when we have to yield to an instrument that can't make the adjustments (like a piano, guitar, harp, or vibraphone). We can tune our intervals to make them pure, and that's a pretty basic feature of string technique. We can (and are expected to) play a pure major third, for example, on the bass, and the thing you hear on a piano is a sorry compromise in comparison. By the same token, we can hear that the size of the intervals in a major scale are not all the same when we tune the pure intervals--the half-step between the leading tone and the tonic is smaller than that between the major third and the fourth, for example. Gb and F# are different on our instrument.

[jazzbassnerd]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Allen

I think what Justin is pointing out is that that the major scale is simply a collection of intervals which could begin on any one of an infinite number of frequencies. Some of us say A=440, but that's a completely arbitrary frequency (it used to be 415, and it's been creeping upwards for the past couple of hundred years); the number of possible frequencies is naturally infinite, hence so is the number of possible major scales. Theoretically, as he said.

But I only make my students learn twelve major scales, and they can enjoy the three or so common enharmonic spellings when they saw away through Simandl.

PS Although we do live in an equal-tempered world, we string players (and wind players) who can adjust the pitch accordingly do not play in equal-tempered tuning except when we have to yield to an instrument that can't make the adjustments (like a piano, guitar, harp, or vibraphone). We can tune our intervals to make them pure, and that's a pretty basic feature of string technique. We can (and are expected to) play a pure major third, for example, on the bass, and the thing you hear on a piano is a sorry compromise in comparison. By the same token, we can hear that the size of the intervals in a major scale are not all the same when we tune the pure intervals--the half-step between the leading tone and the tonic is smaller than that between the major third and the fourth, for example. Gb and F# are different on our instrument.

As for tuning to a different A...that's a whole different issue. Esp. since the tuning to A 415 is an early music tuning where I would bet that the intervals are different than our current ones. If we call where A is placed to be questionable, I think that it is a quick step to call our tuning into question too.

While we, as string players, can play a pure third, pure fifth, et cetera ... I don't think that we do as much shifting to these as we'd like to think. As you said, you're students only learn 12 major scales. We don't practice making these changes in tonality, because the vast majority of music that we hear doesn't make use of them - esp. since most of the time we are playing with an instrument that uses an equal tempered system (most likely piano, but others you mentioned as well).

I think that the people that really deviate from the equal tempered system are singers, specifically unaccompanied choirs.

[Jeremy Allen]

Originally Posted by jazzbassnerd

As for tuning to a different A...that's a whole different issue.

It's not a whole different issue, it's just a way of illustrating how Justin could say that theoretically there are an infinite number of major scales. We wouldn't say "Oh, there are twelve major scales, and they start on the frequency of 440Hz (A), 415.3Hz (Ab), 392Hz (G)..." etc. Even if we considered all of the infinite octaves of scale starting on frequencies we call "A" as just one scale, there are still an infinite number of A scales in between A440 and A441 (or between A415.0000000000001 and A415.0000000000002). Maybe one doesn't consider the different starting frequencies of an arbitrary note to actually be different because our notation just describes an A major scale regardless of the actual frequency, but these different frequencies are nevertheless different. Now I feel guilty of idle philosophizing, but I think Justin's point stands.

Originally Posted by jazzbassnerd

While we, as string players, can play a pure third, pure fifth, et cetera ... I don't think that we do as much shifting to these as we'd like to think...We don't practice making these changes in tonality, because the vast majority of music that we hear doesn't make use of them - esp. since most of the time we are playing with an instrument that uses an equal tempered system (most likely piano, but others you mentioned as well).

I think that the people that really deviate from the equal tempered system are singers, specifically unaccompanied choirs.

You won't hear equal tempering in that choir, correct, but you also won't hear it in an orchestra, a wind ensemble, a string quartet, a brass quintet, or the wind and brass sections of a big band. It could be that I'm sensitive to this because my first career was as a trombonist and my second is as a bassist, but in all of the ensembles mentioned above all of the players (even the wind players with keys, who are able to adjust pitch with their embouchure) are constantly tuning their intervals according to the chord and key. Many of us have heard, in a wind ensemble, orchestra, or jazz band rehearsal, the conductor or leader isolate a chord in a section and have the players tune it, saying something like "OK, who has the third? This is a major chord, so you need to bring it down from where you think it is to get the chord in tune." Not in tune according to equal temperament, but purely in tune. When a string quartet, or the string section in an orchestra, or a divisi bass section, or a trombone choir, plays a big C major chord with C on bottom, G, E above that, and C above that, they tune those intervals purely and the result does not sound like the same thing on a piano.

Even when playing with an equal tempered instrument, it's the equal tempering that our ear is tricked into thinking is pure and not the pure tuning we're tricked into thinking is equal: to try this out for yourself, get a friend to play a humongous (wide-spanning) D major chord on a good, in-tune piano, and bow a D on your A string until it's in tune; then, holding your D, have the pianist switch to an equally-huge Bb major chord, and all of a sudden your in-tune D will seem out of tune (sharp) and need to be adjusted. Even against an equally-tempered piano, our ears expect to hear those pure intervals and not the equal ones.

I will admit that, if you play almost entirely in a piano trio setting in jazz, your pure tuning may be off. That's what I do most of the time now, and while I can play pretty well in tune with a piano I'm much less "accurate" when sitting in the bass section of an orchestra. Or when playing a simple major scale in front of a genius of a bass teacher (like John Hood of the Philadelphia Orchestra, who was the one who really hipped me to all of this, especially the piano trick and the different sizes of intervals within the major scale).

[jazzbassnerd]

For the first part, I guess I just disagree with the theory

For the second part, I'll take your word for it, but I still feel like we don't get these intervalic relationships to stand out while performing. Yes, they are rehearsed, and yes, we can hear them, but I question whether when I go to hear an orchestra play Brahms that they are really able to adjust all of these intervals.

I do find your first point very intriguing, because, in some sense, that means that the orchestra that tunes to A443 and the orchestra that tunes to A440 are not playing pieces in the same key? I actually like that idea a lot!!!!

[rprowse]

Originally Posted by Bassist4Life

PS. This is really strange, but how in the world did you know that I absolutely dig Joe Pass & NHOP?!

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Hey, I see where you got the 15 keys from... the key signatures (I'm a bit slow, sorry).
I know that I'm back tracking and some wonderful things have been said since my post, but...

C
(# keys)G D A E B F# C#
(b keys) F Bb Eb Ab Db Gb Cb

I just don't think it is fair that G# D# & A#get missed out.
After all, they are notes on the keyboard.

Wasn't Cb lucky to make it in!