The basic definition of a scale is a set of musical notes arranged in order. Most people are familiar with the C major scale as being the one where you start at middle C on the piano and just play all ...

The chromatic scale -- the musical scale that follows the notes of the piano and of which the Western seven-tone do-re-mi scale is a subset -- may not be based on number ratios, as many physicists and ...

Best of 2020: Music theory's tricky enough without the lexicon - get your head around the lingo with our quick dictionary When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...

The mathematical rules for creating musical harmony may be more malleable than thought. Western music theory traditionally holds that chords sound most pleasant when they contain notes separated by ...

Sharp notes and flat notes are the black notes on a standard piano keyboard, and they are at the same time exactly the same, and completely the opposite, of each other. They are the same, in that ...

What are microtones, and why are they not an everyday part of classical music? We explore the history and mysteries of the ‘notes in between the notes’. Music is broadly defined as humanly-organised ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - For singers and their audiences, being "in tune" might not be as important as we think. The fact that singers fail to consistently hit the right notes may have implications for the ...

It depends on what you mean by “out of tune”. If you are referring to melodies, the answer is that people have built-in expectations of how a tune will develop, based on whatever musical scale their ...

AT the Society of Arts yesterday, Sir F. Abel, C.B., F.R.S., Chairman of the Council, in the chair, Mr. Alexander J. Ellis, F.R.S., read a paper on “The Musical ...