On Jan 6, 2005, at 6:35 PM, Brad Beyenhof wrote:
On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 16:11:34 -0500, Christopher Smith wrote:I was going to say the whole tone scale, but that is a synthetic scale, not tonal according to the usual criteria,
Since you brought it up, what are the "usual criteria" to determine whether a scale is "tonal"? Diatonicism? Containing a succession of perfect fifths?
Or... ?
Both those are good, but a little conservative to my view. For now, I go with "made up of two tetrachords of consecutive note-names (like C,D,E,F and chromatic alterations) without enharmonic unisons, with the first and eighth notes forming an octave." If you like, you don't even have to buy the tetrachord idea, just have one each of each note name, sharp, flat, natural or double-sharp or double-flat, without doublings or unisons.
This definition is the widest possible one for a tonal centre, as far as I can make out. After that, there seems to be a lot of disagreement.
The synthetic scales, and the scales that behave like synthetic scales (tonic chord is not formed by using alternating notes from the scale) can still appear, but they kind of have their own behaviour. These scales occupy (to my ear, anyway) that middle ground between tonal and atonal (both terms used without any judgment attached, you understand. There is a lot of baggage that comes with these terms, like "classical" does.)
I'm still ironing out the details of all this. I'm only about a hundred years late, but I should have it all done by the time I retire!
Christopher
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