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This topic came up in another forum and various opinions arose regarding the why and wherefore, but thus far no definative answer.
Q: Why is Concert C and not A?
Here is how the original question was asked:
As an engineer, if I were going to make the most basic scale (i.e., the one with no sharps and flats) the easiest to understand, I would have started with A, as follows:
Order_ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Name_ A B C D E F G
W or B W W W W W W W
(W or B refering to the color of the piano key)
Instead, we have:
Order_ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Name_ C D E F G A B
W or B W W W W W W W
I realized lately that when transposing, the wrap around from G to A always slows me down and I was just wondering why it is in the middle of the scale, not the end.
Naming is sometimes arbitrary, but becomes a legacy that has meaning. Does anyone know why western music selected Concert C as the key described with no sharps and flats? Was it by accident, or is there a music theory reason for it?
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It's not. C is arbitrary. Tuning is to A=440, but there are orchestras and instruments that do not tune to that. An Alto flute may be tuned to 442, but you can yank out the tuning slide and change it. I know an old time jazz duo who play electric guitar and stand up bass and they asked me after 10 songs or so to sit in on the piano for one tune (Satin Doll Dm). They then needed to retune because they were both tuned a 1/2 tone down. After that they said it was a pain to include the piano because they just tuned to the upright bass.
There are studies (Schuman etc.) that peg colours and the earths resonance to certain frequencies. 560hz I think was the number, and aboriginals in Australia played that note as their fundamental. The multiplication of that note by some 40 times will yield the colour sky blue in the light spectrum.
I forget alot of what I was taught in this subject, but I'll ponder it some more. I do have notes somewhere but I'm revamping my studio/music/notes/books trying to get things more functional.
This subject leads to study of brainwaves, earth 'tones', and even planetary stuff and some of it seems quite off the wall. None the less, music has no actual key, ie C as a natural centre, it just happens to be the all white key scale, and thus easier to play on a piano.
Fiddle and fold players often use A for most of their stuff, it suits a beginner violin / fiddle player. Beginning guitar players want nothing in the key of F.
The C or soprano flute has C as the low note, but it's hard to have consistency as a new flute player and the don't want that low C in the music, but are not adverse to a D.
And horn players (B flat ones) can easily do a G at the low end, and can usually make 2 octaves then, but from G to high C you are looking at a more advanced player. Bear in mind that when I say G it really is an A because of the Bflat nature of the horn and it's fundamental, which when you whack the mouthpiece with your hand you hear a Bflat not a C. So when a piano and a bflat horn play the same note to your ear the horn is actually reading one note or 2 semi tones higher so an F on the piano is a read as a G on the horn.
I hope this gives some food for thought. I have actually registered to take this course at University this fall, and hope I get in. Somewhere the wife has a big book on the Physics and math of music, I have to review that and decide if I'm going to take that course, math was never my strong suit unless it's the accounting type.
John Conley
Musica est vita
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I don't know if this matters or not but it is interesting to add this thought.
Given that a major scale is root, whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step (whole step), where you start is not relevant. Now, that does not address the math/physics question about where the standard 440hz tone tuning came from and who named that "A". If it was Bartolomeo Cristofori when he built that first piano in 1700, we can't ask him.... LOL!!
John brings up a funny story when mentioning the key that horns play in. When I started playing sax, I learned the horn in concert key. So when the sheet music says F#, and I play the F# fingering, I hear an A. Thus I learned that when I play that combination of keys depressed I get an A, and I moved forward calling that A. Made for some problems reading sheet music in college. I had to take every chart home and rewrite them in C so I could read them. LOL!!!
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Trombone can be weird.
In British style music the notes are in treble clef and in Bflat.
In American trombone it's bass clef and read in C so they learn different positions for the notes.
In some cases it's bass clef and in Bflat.
Of course, as instruments go it's pretty much perfect in that you never need to tune it per se. You just play out of or into the note.
And trombone players are consistently weird, talking and joking all the time no matter which band they are in. And they seem to stick together at parties like they are a separate society. I have a bone, and can actually play some stuff, but because my other horns call me I leave it in the case most weeks, sigh. I want to get in on that horsing around and stuff. When everyone at practice gets serious I put on my clown nose.
John Conley
Musica est vita
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The system wasn't "designed" per se, it *developed* over time.
Over the years there have been various attempts made to "simplify" or otherwise try to come up with a system that someone thought made "more sense" but every single attempt has met with dismal failure.
My use of the term, "developed" up there might better be defined as, "evolved"...
Not sure what the fellow meant with the W and B stuff up there, neither makes any sense to me. Apparently he is going off of the idea that the white keys must represent a specific desirable place to center things. That is not necessarily the case here at all IMO. Ever meet a Black Key Pianist? Hmmmm...
--Mac
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The middle key on the 88 key piano is an E, giving you the piano in the key of ...E!
The lowest note is A, the middle E and the top C giving you an Am triad. But there is still the E.
The violin is tuned to A and the concertmaster is the #1 violin player who is in charge of tuning the whole she-bang. In times gone buy the concert master would tune his violin to A using a tuning fork, and the rest of the tuning of everything is done from there.
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Well, for my daily injection of alleged humor, Irving Berlin wrote everything originally in the key of C because he didn't play using the black keys very well.
And HE wrote White Christmas, so.....
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Quote:
Well, for my daily injection of alleged humor, Irving Berlin wrote everything originally in the key of C because he didn't play using the black keys very well.
And HE wrote White Christmas, so.....
White Christmas - hmm, don't have the sheet music in front of me, but it sure seems like there's a lot more 1/2 steps in there than just B to C and E to F. He would have had to hit a black key now and then.
Until I started playing keys for a band that used horns, I did the same. Hands migrate to C. However, playing half-way decent B3 in flat keys is actually EASIER somewhat to me because of the way the voicings for I IV and V work with some of those flats thrown in. I got to the point where I almost enjoyed it!
Then I learned that a capo on the 3rd fret can also be my friend for playing in those same keys on guitar. Yeah, yeah, a real player doesn't need no stinking capo - heard it before. In my brain, the chord fingerings for the flat keys are even hard-wired now as to their open positions with the capo on the 3rd fret. I don't even really think about it. F=D, Bb=G, C=A, Eb=C, etc.
Once I learned that trick, I ended up wearing out the spring on my Kyser capo, I used that thing so much! Had to buy a new one.
-Scott
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Actually I write in C,D or E because that is the limitation of the range I can sing in. And I like flatted keys because the black keys stand up off the keyboard and are easier to find when fishing blindfold for a key. As it is I have a small piece of duct tape on the A's so when I reach without looking I can find "home" by touch. Playing live with boards at 90 degrees to each other there is a lot of blind reaching.
But we are way off topic....
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Eddie and Scott:
What I recall reading is that Berlin played only in the key of C, but this doesn't imply that he didn't use any black keys. He would have used accidentals as required to fit the melody/harmony.
The sheet music I have for White Christmas is in C, but the word "of" in "I'm dreaming of . ." has to be D#.
I think I also recall reading that he had a piano on which the keys would shift so that even if he was playing the C major keys, he could shift it so that the music coming out was in E flat for example.
Never mind, Errol Garner couldn't read music in any key.
Glenn
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Well, as the original post said, "my daily injection of alleged humor". Berlin was one of the greats and I am sure he could play in any key he chose to play in. It was supposed to be a wise crack given that the topic of the thread is why the keys are arranged and named as they are.
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Quote:
I think I also recall reading that he had a piano on which the keys would shift so that even if he was playing the C major keys, he could shift it so that the music coming out was in E flat for example.
Glenn
Steve Allen (humorist, originator of the "Tonight Show," and all-around nice guy) did, in fact, have such a piano. The internal action somehow shifted so he could finger several tonalities in the key of C.
Mac - Graham Nash did in fact write a song called "Black Keys." Look it up on youtube or elsewhere; it's fun and illuminating. I've played it before--anyone can do it!
R.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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Of course with synthesizers we can detune and transpose any way we want to, and I HAVE seen keyboard players who were so weak they could only play white keys. There was one local band that had a female keyboard player who was obviously there for her voice because she played the whole set I watched with 3 fingers on one hand. No left hand ever and thumb and 2 fingers only from the right hand. Outstanding singer and a good looker though.
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Quote:
The violin is tuned to A and the concertmaster is the #1 violin player who is in charge of tuning the whole she-bang. In times gone buy the concert master would tune his violin to A using a tuning fork, and the rest of the tuning of everything is done from there.
Um, exactly how old ARE you, Johnboy?
My entire existence, the tuning standard (the fork) has belonged to the OBOE section of the orchestra. The Oboist tunes the oboe to the fork, then, on command from the Concertmaster, who is the first chair first violinist, plays the A for the rest of the orchestra and they all tune from that note.
--Mac
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There are a lot of anomolies like this in music and it makes things very tiresome sometimes. Being someone that plays instruments pitched in Bb Eb and C I hate all this transposition stuff its just so tiresome. I could rant on about the impracticality of notation and trheory for ages, its so needlessly obscure at times. We should remember that its a historical hotchpotch of this and that compromises for different musical settings and requirements. When music theory was originating there was no major scale just a bunch of unrelated modes (not the modern modes) and there was also no equal temprement scale this had to wait until Bach's day. I guess different orchestras, choirs, bands just tuned ot eachother
Of topic:
The whole idea of scratching little dots you can hardly see onto tiny tramlines and then littering the page with symbols with very silly latin names like 'Appogitura', or 'hemi-demi-semiquaver' is a major obstacle for many learners. I do hope some international convetion give this a rethink - we need an Esperanto for music.
BHy showing the absolute piutch names notation encourages people to read without thinking of the harmony (just the individual notes) and much essential information simply not apparent or horrendously dificult to notate.
End of rant.
Win 11 64, Asus Rog Strix z390 mobo, 64 gig RAM, 8700k
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What's funny to me is that after YEARS of school, theory lessons, etc.....
When I chart now I just chart measures and chord names.
/ C / / Am / / F /Dm F / G / /
I figure by now I should KNOW what makes up a C chord.... More time is spent with slate sheets so I know what track holds what part of the multitrack, what MIDI channel, etc.
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.
I have been looking for the answer to this for a long time. The best answer I have found is that C got to be the default through a quirk of organ building.
When you are cutting pipes to length for various pitches, multiples of 8 feet will give you "C" notes. 8 feet is middle C, 4 feet an octave higher, 16 feet an octave lower. All the other notes involve odd fractions and multiples. The C notes were the easiest to cut and measure, so they became the starting point and reference point for organ building. The notes of the scale starting and ending on C became the ones that did not use black keys.
The story of how "A" got to be the tuning note, and how 440 Hz got to be chosen for that pitch, is a whole 'nother story.
Last edited by flatfoot; 06/20/11 09:11 AM.
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The American music industry used a standard of A 440 Hz in 1926,in instrument manufacturing. In 1936 the American Standards Association recommended that the A above middle C be tuned to 440 Hz. This standard was taken up by the International Organization for Standardization in 1955 . Why ? Because a long time ago musicians used different values for A thus a need for standards . As for ABCDEFG as opposed CDEFGAB why not DEFGABC ,EFGABCD ,FGABCDE ,OH No Now Iv'e gone modal on you ! I hate when I go modal,and don't get me started on the B/W thing .(lol) My first experience with that was my Dad playing guitar and he told me to only bang on the black keys and it would sound OK . Musta been F# he was in.
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In reply to Tommyc - it's not just 'a long time ago', some orchestras still use values other than 440Hz for A. Check out this conversation in a forum on violinist.com: http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?ID=11273I can say that when tuning pianos, I'm rarely tuning to exactly 440 on a particular axe - because most people that call me haven't had theirs tuned in literally years, and their whole instrument is so out of pitch that if I try raising it all the way to 440, I'll get a call in a week to come back and re-do the job! So, I will quiz down the piano owner on when the last time the piano was tuned (most tuners I know will leave some written record inside the piano of what they set the instrument to and when) and they will sheepishly admit years of time. Then I explain that I can do a better job getting the piano tuned to itself first, then over time gradually raise the pitch of the instrument, through several tunings, up to 440. When I do this, then I get the call in 6 months to come again, and I'll gradually get that piano up to 440, but it takes time for the piano to settle into it's new tuning each time. -Scott
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