I have played drums and guitar for 25 years and never “got into” music theory. I know what sounds good and play that but I never learned the names or theory behind it.
Why is a 5th not 5 notes apart? On a keyboard it’s any where from 4 white keysto 8 total keys? Why is there not uniformity or consistency?
In: 0
When writing music, you start with a repertoire of notes to choose from, called a scale. Many different scales have been used by different cultures, genres, and composers, but the most common scales used in modern Western music, such as the major scale and the harmonic minor scale, have three notes in between the starting note and the fifth (whose frequency is approximately 1.5 times that of the starting note).
> On a keyboard it’s any where from 4 white keysto 8 total keys? Why is there not uniformity or consistency?
The keyboard is designed so that the notes from the C major scale are on white keys, and the rest are on black keys. Each pair of adjacent keys (e.g. C to C#, or E to F) have frequencies in a fixed ratio (the twelfth root of 2, to be precise). So the black keys aren’t any different from the white keys – they’re just arranged like that for convenience.
Latest Answers