Theory question - E#?

[FretlessMainly]

With regards to E# vs. F, if you're writing a melody, much better to use E# going to F# than F-natural to F#. It's just easier to read that way.

It is much easier, but the convention should be predicated on the harmony dictating how the note is written. If, for example, a melody were reflecting a G7 changing to a GMaj7 and the melody is using the seventh, then F to F# would be the proper convention. Perhaps G7 to GMaj7 with the 7th in the melody may not be something you see very often, but you do see Dmin to DMaj fairly often (such as a picady third at the end of a composition, as in And I Love Her which is Am to AMaj) and F to F# would be the proper way to indicate the thirds if they occur in the melody.

 

[Sschweg]

The best way I have heard enharmonic spelling explained is this. Using the A+ as an example, the augmented 5th has to be a 5th. So it has to be some kind of an E. The 4th degree of the Cb scale has to be some kind of an F, so... Fb. Thinking this way makes it make sense to my simple mind.

 

[JTE]

Here is where a lot of people miss the beauty of "standard" notation. It's NOT just telling you where to put your fingers, nor merely what note to play. It's telling you the melodic, rhythmic, and (often) harmonic information of the piece. In that context knowing that it's an E#, not and F natural is important.

John

 

[fraublugher]

Replace the alphabet with roman numerals and poof , you're in all keys minus the headache.

 

[JimmyM]

Roman numerals are a great idea for chord charts, but a real charlie foxtrot for writing melodies or solos.

 

[mrbell321]

I think alot of you misunderstood what I was saying...
I said "decided" as sort of tongue-in-cheek. I'm well aware that our current system developed slowly over hundreds of years. But there was still a "decision". Musicians have collectively decided, probably by default rather than conscious action, that not changing is easier than coming up w/ a new system. The system is "good enough" for what we need and it would be "expensive" to replace. It is expressive and it works, but that doesn't make it perfect. There just isn't enough pressure to improve. Similar to evolution. We could have evolved better eyesight that extends past infrared and ultraviolet, but our eyesight has served us well enough to avoid being killed, so there's not enough evolutionary advantage to a wider spectrum.

And on the rhythmic notation, it's the same. It works. It expresses our intent well enough and is fairly entrenched. But again, that doesn't make it perfect.

Written music is similar to a written language. Not everyone can read or write English. So, once upon a time, someone invented Esperanto. A very logical language that is relatively easy to learn. But it hasn't ever been widely accepted because it requires everyone to change to something unknown. If I were to move to Germany, it's much easier for me to learn German rather than make all Germans and me learn Esperanto. Similarly, many musicians read the current standard system of music and do quite well with it. Learning that system is much easier than trying to invent something new and get other muscians(who already have an accepted language) to adopt it.

Once again, I'm not saying that it doesn't work, or even that I have a solution that is in any way better. I'm just staying what we have is not perfect.

 

[JimmyM]

I have no complaints about it

 

[Clef_de_fa]

Replace the alphabet with roman numerals and poof , you're in all keys minus the headache.

I wouldn't want to see Bach's suite for solo cello all in number ( which doesn't tells you if it is a very high E or the lowest E of your bass ... ) or Chromatic Fantasy with number ... it would be a nightmare.

Number are good of chords and numerical bass ( classical music stuff ) but otherwise it is really useless

 

[Clef_de_fa]

I think alot of you misunderstood what I was saying...
I said "decided" as sort of tongue-in-cheek. I'm well aware that our current system developed slowly over hundreds of years. But there was still a "decision". Musicians have collectively decided, probably by default rather than conscious action, that not changing is easier than coming up w/ a new system. The system is "good enough" for what we need and it would be "expensive" to replace. It is expressive and it works, but that doesn't make it perfect. There just isn't enough pressure to improve. Similar to evolution. We could have evolved better eyesight that extends past infrared and ultraviolet, but our eyesight has served us well enough to avoid being killed, so there's not enough evolutionary advantage to a wider spectrum.

And on the rhythmic notation, it's the same. It works. It expresses our intent well enough and is fairly entrenched. But again, that doesn't make it perfect.

Written music is similar to a written language. Not everyone can read or write English. So, once upon a time, someone invented Esperanto. A very logical language that is relatively easy to learn. But it hasn't ever been widely accepted because it requires everyone to change to something unknown. If I were to move to Germany, it's much easier for me to learn German rather than make all Germans and me learn Esperanto. Similarly, many musicians read the current standard system of music and do quite well with it. Learning that system is much easier than trying to invent something new and get other muscians(who already have an accepted language) to adopt it.

Once again, I'm not saying that it doesn't work, or even that I have a solution that is in any way better. I'm just staying what we have is not perfect.

The only thing that would be hard or close to impossible to make with the standart notation is stuff like prepared piano. Otherwise the standart notation is perfect in my eyes.

 

[Russell L]

http://www.cyberfretbass.com/theory/chord-construction/3-note/part-3/page3.php

OK, I was reading that^ page about chord theory. They are explaining how to make an A+ (augmented) chord / arpeggio from an A major. Here's the quote that made me go, "Huh... really?"

"Note the #5 is called E# and not F. F would be a b6. Even though E# and F sound exactly the same, the note name has to reflect the function within the chord."

Is this true? I've never heard that before. I read music all through school in band class and I don't recall ever seeing an E# or Cb or anything like that. It was a long time ago so I could be wrong...

Thanx,

-Mac

It's true and proper. E is the 5th, so you still need to call it some kind of a 5th, not a 6th.

 

[DBCrocky]

Ok, notation gurus...

So, if:

A C# E# = A diminished

Then would:

A C# F = Ab6 ?? (Technically A C# E F played without the fifth?)

And the difference between them depend on the context they were used in?

 

[Pacman]

Ok, notation gurus...

So, if:

A C# E# = A diminished

Then would:

A C# F = Ab6 ?? (Technically A C# E F played without the fifth?)

And the difference between them depend on the context they were used in?

Well, A C# E# is A augmented.

I'd call A C# F an F augmented in 1st inversion at first glance. But context is everything.

 

[oniman7]

Ok, notation gurus...

So, if:

A C# E# = A diminished

Then would:

A C# F = Ab6 ?? (Technically A C# E F played without the fifth?)

And the difference between them depend on the context they were used in?

Edit: first of all, an A C# E#is is an augmented, not diminished. An A diminished triad would be A, C, Eb
Easy answer is yes. I don't know if that's the proper chord name, but it would be seen as a minor 6.
If you were playing an augmented, you would most likely have minor 6, I believe.

I'm going to bass missing intervals off of the whole tone scale since I'm not familiar with a fully augmented scale.

Therefore,
A is the root
B is the major second
C# is the major third
D# is the augmented fourth
E# is the augmented fifth
F is the minor sixth, F# is the major sixth
G is the minor 7, G# is the major 7
A is the root.

You'd probably have something akin to a major scale where the fifth is raised, in context.

If you had, say, an A major add 13 chord, it would have an F#as the six. Making that an Amajor flat 13 chord would make that F#is an F, not an E#. That is the contextual difference.

 

[Portphilia]

Ok, notation gurus...

So, if:

A C# E# = A diminished

Then would:

A C# F = Ab6 ?? (Technically A C# E F played without the fifth?)

And the difference between them depend on the context they were used in?

Think of it this way: If you have an A major triad, those three notes are going to be in spaces on the staff. In order to keep them this way, for an augmented chord you would write in an E# so that the E is still in a space, because an F natural would be on a line, and this could in fact be read as an inverted F augmented chord.

 

[Pacman]

Edit: first of all, an A C# E#is is an augmented, not diminished. An A diminished triad would be A, C, Eb
Easy answer is yes. I don't know if that's the proper chord name, but it would be seen as a minor 6.
If you were playing an augmented, you would most likely have minor 6, I believe.

You can't have an augmented chord with a minor 6th - the 5th and 6th would be the same tone.

I'm going to bass missing intervals off of the whole tone scale since I'm not familiar with a fully augmented scale.

Therefore,
A is the root
B is the major second
C# is the major third
D# is the augmented fourth
E# is the augmented fifth
F is the minor sixth, F# is the major sixth
G is the minor 7, G# is the major 7
A is the root.

You'd probably have something akin to a major scale where the fifth is raised, in context.

If you had, say, an A major add 13 chord, it would have an F#as the six. Making that an Amajor flat 13 chord would make that F#is an F, not an E#. That is the contextual difference.

You misspelled the whole tone scale, so your whole premise falls apart right where we're talking about.

A B C# D# E# G A is an A whole tone scale.

As I said, I'd look at that collection of tones as an F+ triad in first inversion.

 

[Febs]

Ok, notation gurus...

So, if:

A C# E# = A diminished
H
Then would:r

A C# F = Ab6 ?? (Technically A C# E F played without the fifth?)

And the difference between them depend on the context they were used in?

If I saw "Ab6" on a chart, I would read it as an Ab chord with an added 6th, Ab C Eb F, not as an A major chord with a b6.

 

[lunarpollen]

No absurdity to it at all. It's actually a very elegant system, and it's worked for hundreds of years.

It is absurd in that, aside from having no actual relation to pitch except those arbitrarily assigned a few hundred years ago in one particular popular form of notation, letters do not have any inherent mathematical relationship to one another. In fact the "order" that the alphabet is in is arbitrary, there is no inherent characteristic of any letter that makes it deserving of being in any particular place in relation to another letter. Scholars don't really know why alphabets are ordered in this general fashion, the origins go back to 14th century BC and it may have something to do with when letters were derived from pictures for things, and groupings of certain symbols made logical sense in that the things they represented had some kind of logical flow in a particular order. The current "order" of the Latin alphabet doesn't have any logic, it just exists out of convention.

Numbers, however, have an inherent order to them. Sure, numerals are just the symbols for the numbers, but it's much more natural to conceptualize the various symmetries in the number represented by "12" for instance than it is to see mathematical or geometrical relations between letters of the alphabet that are assigned to other concepts like numbers or wave frequencies.

Like someone else mentioned, the English language has a lot of absurdity to it; it's existed in one form or another for hundreds of years and is full of irregularities and arbitrary absurdities. Such is the curse of any evolving language, I suppose, to one degree or another. If someone today were to invent, *completely* from scratch, a language of musical notation based on the what is known about music now, minus all extraneous concepts (i.e, distilled to the very essence of how things *sound*), it would probably bear little resemblance to common standard Western Musical Notation and would probably be something much more intuitive to a layperson.

 

[BassyBill]

If I saw "Ab6" on a chart, I would read it as an Ab chord with an added 6th, Ab C Eb F, not as an A major chord with a b6.

And you'd be absolutely right, of course.

 

[oniman7]

You can't have an augmented chord with a minor 6th - the 5th and 6th would be the same tone.

You misspelled the whole tone scale, so your whole premise falls apart right where we're talking about.

A B C# D# E# G A is an A whole tone scale.

As I said, I'd look at that collection of tones as an F+ triad in first inversion.

D'oh! You're right. I abandoned the whole tone scale and started just listing the intervals I wasn't sure of. Should have left that part out.

Wouldn't it be an E# augmented triad though?

 

[TOG]

Theory question: I have heard that, for example, a F# is very, very slightly higher in frequency Vs a Gb. Anyone else ever hear of this? Is there any truth to this? Why or why not theory-wise?