You should read his 'H' as 'B'
I don't know the history of when and why some parts of the world use H instead of B.
He was describing G major (D G H) so it's a safe bet that (D G B) is how you can read it.

 

He is probably German, but not necessary.. Where I lived, we also used german nomenclature. An with all the great composers they have, you just can't argue they are wrong or something ..;) Italian, French.. is also different.

I try to use A B C D.. flat/sharp (Bb, B, B#), and I guess we all should - to avoid confusion. Meanwhile, this may be of help:

 

The strangest thing of all.. is that B flat (eng) is B (ger)!

 

H means B.

 

Indeed, so at the risk of me now writing a hucket load of hullcrap...

I love this chart that @TaxiDriver posted here.

I like the way it conveys some uncontestable history that shows how, for some reason, musicians have found it necessary, or worthwhile, to carve up an octave using not just 12 labels but 21 labels.

At the risk of going off topic or just extending the topic too far... Why are there 21 labels for the notes in an octave?

I think of that issue from two directions...

• Bottom-up: why and how did the maths and physics of sound, and our weird brains, lead us to adopt a 12 tone system?
• Top-down: why is it still musically more accurate, sometimes essential, sometimes just more useful, to think outside that 12 tone labelling and use more of those 21 labels?

For the Bottom-up discussion I can recommend this link... Why are there only 12 pitch notes
Do see the included comments to the guy's original post. Overall, the article plus comments do provide a very nice discussion of why we have gravitated to using 12 Tone Equal Temperament, and also nicely discusses plenty of examples of circumstances, traditions, and cultures that have not done that.

But for the Top-down discussion I'm looking for suggestions please.
What I want is an essay somewhere with the following features...

1. It should be for beginners. I want to wear my beginners hat when I read it, even if I already know some of what to expect.
2. It should try to explain how, even though we mostly work in a 12 Tone Equal Temperament setting, there are still situations where those 21 labels for an octave are a) more accurate, b) maybe essential, c) just musically useful.

Can anyone point me to that elusive essay?

 

Last edited: Jan 13, 2020

Sorry, I can't point you to any good essay and this topic is very complex to explain it here. But I can say something.

We have 12 semitones (and 21 labels) in one octave in the equal temperament only.

In traditional temperaments C sharp and D flat are different notes. They aren't enharmonics. The difference between them is very small (several cents, may be ten or dozen) but they aren't identical. Every scale divides one octave in their own, special way and after building all the scales we could get more than 21 different notes in total.

That means that in temperaments other than equal one:
1) you cannot transpose a piece between scales, it's possible in the equal temperament only,
2) any transposition is possible only by retuning an instrument (and it's not a transposition in the sense we usually mean).

The equal temperament is a compromise and a simplification. All music based on the equal temperament is a bit dissonant, we don't use really pure intervals at all. But we have 12 notes and 21 labels only.

I think it is also related to the circle of fifths but I don't undestand it clearly.

If you are really intrested read something about the history of european temperaments.

 

Thank you @Ibnv for the response.
I agree that an important issue to be aware of the whole time is.. are we talking about
- situations where something like C# is actually a different pitch to Db
or
- situations where there's only pitch involved but we may still have reasons for using different labels like C# or Db

For the first case, yes it's insanely complex.
I may well be just fantasising about finding a simplified essay on that.
I can see this non-simple book Music: A Mathematical Offering by Dave Benson available all over the web;
I use this link.. https://logosfoundation.org/kursus/music_math.pdf
It is beautiful and comprehensive but not light-weight reading.

For the second case, the only stuff I've found is bits and pieces scattered around.
For this case I think the ideas are much simpler and a simple essay should be possible but I'm no nearer to finding one.

Here's an example of a few ideas in that area.
They seem to relate to context and a desire to follow an 'alphabet rule' where each note in a scale gets a unique letter
(e.g., the alphabet rule says we don't want C and C# in the same scale, better to have C and Db)

Example
Someone is playing in C# Major and they want to modulate to the parallel minor.
Should they call it C# minor or Db minor?

C# minor is the preferred choice; it has 4 sharps
C# D# E F# G# A B C#
whereas
Db minor is a dog's breakfast, it would have 8 flats, including a double flat for the B
Db Eb Fb Gb Ab Bbb Cb Db

Similarly
Someone is playing in C# Major and they want to modulate to the Dominant
Should they call that G# Major or Ab Major
Ab Major is the preferred choice; it has 4 flats
Ab Bb C D Eb F G Ab
whereas
G# Major is a dog's breakfast, it would have 8 sharps, including a double sharp for the F
G# A# B# C# D# E# F## G#

But the above is just one example (and it's a simple one).
What I still want is some pre-written essay that takes me through a simple tour of lots of things like that.
I remain hopeful.

 

Last edited: Jan 19, 2020

1) Note that, in the passage you mentioned (1:47), a chord progression based on the fifth cycle is used (regarding the first five chords... and remember that Gm-Dm comprises D minor scale and so on...)

2) Also, the fifth chord (Bm) is an elision for a new progression based on chromatic mediators (Bm, Dm, Fm) that ends with the arrival of the Fm dominant 7th Chord (C7, that acts as a driving force to bring this stretch back to the fifth cycle)

Being within the scope of tonal/modal music (and not exceeding the limits of your question), each chord of these progressions can be used as submediant, supertonic and mediant (and, why not combine them to obtain chromatic effects, using on the Gm chord Doric Gm intention or adding a more prominent dissonance, Phrygian Gm intention)?

Diving into modal (and ethnic) music once and for all, what if each minor chord is used as an access point (common chord) to create melodies built on other scales?



—Stop, that sounds like jazz!!!
—Sorry, I had to pass all "SSSS" (speaking into the mic, internal joke heard between Joe Satriani and Steve Vai)

So, as you can see, the sky's the limit...

 

Last edited: Jan 19, 2020

Indeed.
When I'm playing with better players than me, I'm regularly reminded that the question "does this work?" is the wrong question
and should always be replaced with "can you make it work?"
Sometimes, there's an idea which I had put in the 'dead end' basket, and a better player just effortlessly brings it to life.

 

Music theory is indeed important, however it depends on who is teaching you. 99.9% of the so called music theory being taught out there is actually crippling you from truly understanding REAL music theory. It puts you into shackles. It is meant to confuse you. There is a secret that most of you dont know. It is rarily mentioned if ever at all. The secret is that there is only one scale. The breaking up of music theory into many different scales is actually straight up deception and a human concoction and distortion. I have met only one person in my life who made that claim im making right now and it took me almost a decade to finally comprehend this truth i was told back then. There is only one scale in music theory. Thats the real truth you will never hear about from any so called teacher making money off of you at an hourly rate. They obviously want you to come back, so they can make more money off of you teaching you distorted music theory that will do more harm than good. It holds you back. Real music theory wont teach you to memorize chords etc, it enables you to play without thinking, without recalling learned stuff. Its an intuitive flow. There is only one scale. Just as there is only one science. The breaking up of that one science into many different scientific fields is deception and keeps scientists from finding real truth. It cripples them. For instance, for the physicist, the electron is everything, for the chemist it means absolutely nothing and yet all of it is connected and part of the big picture. Physics and chemistry are not seperate but interconnected sciences and part of the big picture. This means that neither the physicist, nor the chemist will ever be able to arrive at REAL truth in their lifetime unless they actually realize that everything is connected. This also happens in quantum mechanics where they smash particles to get even smaller particles. In other words, they take the "whole", smash it, to get individual parts and then treat the individual parts as independent wholes when they are not, they are just "parts" of the whole, hence why they will arrive at false conclusions and have misperceptions about the true mechanics behind natural phenomena. Not many will understand what i just said but its the immovable truth. If you take a "whole" and break it up into individual parts and then treat or investigate the individual parts as independent wholes, then you are destined to draw false conclusions and have misperceptions. Let nature teach you real music theory. Light and dark. Duality, but there is no such thing as darkness or shadow. What is darkness? Does it exist? No it does not in that sense. Darkness is merely the absence of light, its NOT a counterpart that exists as an independent whole. But in the minds of billions of people it does exist because you have been taught lies and rubbish by broken polarized minds who lost the ability to see things for what they truly are. There is no light and darkness. There is only light and the absence of light. Darkness does not exist in the way most people may think it does. And thats all im gonna say. Make of it what you will. I could say so much more but i choose not to. This truth of one scale is not received very well by those who have been brainwashed with the many scales lie. There is only one whole, and when you break up the whole into individual parts and then treat the individual parts as independent wholes when they are just parts of the whole, then you have real confusion on your hands. Sure, the music theory being taught everywhere helps you to some degree but at the same time it cripples you and keeps you from reaching certain higher levels that you could reach if you only knew the truth, there is only one scale. Food for thought. Much love.

- Gatekeeper432

PS: What is the difference between a teacher and a real teacher? A teacher will fill your mind with thoughts of other men, knowledge for you to memorize and to recall from your mind (memory center in the brain). A real teacher will enable you to think for yourself and that equals intuitively playing from the heart, not the mind (without having to think, without having to recall from the mind), see the difference?

It is the best kept secret regarding music theory. There is only one scale. I hinted enough. Go and figure it out or ignore this truth, as always the choice is yours.

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2020

OK.... I choose to avoid cloud cuckoo land.

 

heres a hint......play c min pentatonic scale then e min pentatonic scale then Ab min pentatonic scale.......bingo thats the chromatic scale all 12 notes

 

Yep. We should also mention that the Db minor hamonic is just theoretical, because you couldn't assign a proper staff key signature.
So it must be used C# minor harmonic instead.

 

Thank you @orbitbooster.
So, in my optimistic search for an essay when I initially said...
"It should try to explain how, even though we mostly work in a 12 Tone Equal Temperament setting, there are still situations where those 21 labels for an octave are a) more accurate, b) maybe essential, c) just musically useful."

The example I described, and which @orbitbooster elaborated on, would fall into a category something like...
we need all those labels because of constraints imposed by (limitations of) our staff-oriented notation system.
i.e., the notation system couldn't cope with using 'only sharps' or using 'only flats', it needs both. That seems fair enough.

Can we also find examples where we need those labels, not because of notation system constraints,
but for some other musical reason?

 

To ignorantly dismiss things without further investigation is not very wise. But feel free to move on, its not my goal to convince any of you of anything anyways. Scales and chords for instance, are they really two seperate things? Chords can be looked at as "scales in which you play the notes together", and scales can be looked at as "chords in which you play the notes one after another", then the scale and chord formula are one and the same thing. But it is taught to you as if they were two seperate things. The chord formulas are also the scale formulas, and the scale formulas are also the chord formulas. Is that not so? But no so called music theory teacher would ever tell you that, he would enable you too much all at once by telling you that in the beginning, but he needs you to come back for more lessons so he can make more money off of you by making you memorize chords and scales. So again, when you take the whole and break it into individual parts (many scales theory) and then treat the individual parts as independent wholes when they are only parts, then you obviously have it confused and wrong and you severely limit yourself. These are real misperceptions which lead to wrong and confusing theories that will only cripple your musical talent or lets say keep it in check. Never being able to rise above a certain level. Its not the full picture. You only have parts of the puzzle, and even worse, you treat the parts as independent wholes. More food for thought.

PS: Who has real eyes to see and real ears to hear? Who can comprehend what is written in the link below? Not many. https://sapientiaexanimo.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/the-universal-harmonic-pattern-of-life/

Let nature teach you REAL music theory.

- Gatekeeper432

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2020

As long we stick with the circle of fifth, we're ok to go.

 

Indeed, very well observed. Better players know schemata that work in different ways: based on knowledge about genres and their stylistic patterns (either through theoretical knowledge and/or by mastering a melodic/harmonic instrument and/or by having an excellent ear!), they know how to innovate, to think about different solutions (they know how to make it work).

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2020

By the topic title, I thought this was going to be about a Kerry King solo...

 

You don't need music theory to write the most beautiful music in the world. Music theory though can be a convenient way to express and to explain what was written after the fact. Music creation, and to me at least, melody creation, is not dependant on theory and theory is an afterthought to the very spirit of creation. Emotion is and should be the force and imputess behind the need to live through one's art. Dots and such on a page are not music but at best is an approximation of intent and a guide in educating those that can decifer those scrawlings. They are the words and punctuation disembodied from the life that music takes on in the flesh and throes of passion.