Why are there only 7 musical notes? Was it decided to divide sounds like that or are there no more in nature?

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Why are there only 7 musical notes? Was it decided to divide sounds like that or are there no more in nature?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

A lot of music from the middle east use quarter-notes in their scales, which is half a semitone. This can be seen easily on fretted instruments as they have an additional 4 (I think) frets per octave.

Anonymous 0 Comments

That’s just the western scale. There are other musical scales and there’s also microtonal music out there. American blues music is also microtonal.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m gonna be the off beat one who says that there actually are more than the traditional “7 musical notes” (12 if you’re taking other’s explanations as well). There’s microtonal music as well but my limited understanding is that western traditions created a dominant music style that makes other styles sound out of tune.

See Adam Neely for an example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4KIwA8O9LU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4KIwA8O9LU)

Anonymous 0 Comments

Enough comments have been made to help with the cultural aspect of western music and how intervals are legitimately culturally based but also influenced by harmonic physics.

That being said. I think it’s important to also bring up that rhythm is also in this category. Much of western music theory regarding rhythm is based on how we wrote it down and how westerners had a hard time notating African and others world music rhythms so they just thought it was noise instead of being much more complicated polyrhythms and micro rhythm. It perfectly normal for many cultures to have a meter that involves multiple pulses or vice versa. Western notation just didn’t know how to write it out or thought it was random. The term “swing” ultimately is a biproduct of this. Lots of interesting music theory history involved with this topic let alone actual harmonic frequency notes.

Anonymous 0 Comments

There are actually 12 notes, of which 7 are chosen to make up a major scale.

No, this is not the only way to divide pitches. It’s the standard for traditional western music.

Why 12? Because some powers of the number 2^1/12 make rational numbers (with remarkably little error) with small denominators. For instance:

2^7/12 = 3/2

2^5/12 = 4/3

2^4/12 = 5/4

Humans can hear the relationship between pitches. When two pitches are related by a rational number, they sound pleasant.

Anonymous 0 Comments

[removed]

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’ll explain, but I have to correct you on something. There are twelve notes in an octave, if you only go by half step (including flats/sharps).

There was a smart guy a long time ago named pythagoras.

He had a theorum named after him. Smart guy. Also a rock star for his day.

Found out that if you take two equal strings, then cut one so that it is in a 2:3 ratio to the first, it will be a perfect fifth higher. He kept doing this.

C to G, G to D, D to A, A to E, E to B, B to f#, f# to c#, c# to g#, g# to d#, d# to a#, a# to e# (which is f natural), F back to C.

This is called the circle of fifths. This includes every note of the modern keyboard.

Nonwestern music has quarter tones or nontonal music, but western music (derived from the old dead guys you know, from bach to Wagner) uses almost entirely these twelve tones.

Source: I have a music degree from a prestigious big ten university. Coincidentally, I’m a weld inspector because fuck the fine arts and fuck me for trying to get a career in it.

Anonymous 0 Comments

There are actually 12, but 7 in a key

Short, hyper simplified answer

Because we decided to stop at 12

Keys just sound good together, and 7 is the number that works

For a better answer, I think they’ve been provided

Anonymous 0 Comments

It should be pointed out that 12-tone equal temperament is a Western invention. Many cultures have either a greater number of possible “notes” or a fewer number available. For instance, in Indian music, there are only 7 notes available:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svara#:~:text=The%20seven%20notes%20of%20the,Pa%2C%20Dha%2C%20and%20Ni.

These systems come about through convention over millennia of making and producing music, and different cultures will build different systems.