Why is the musical scale the way it is? 12 keys: 7 major, 5 minor?
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There are major and minor keys based on all 12 notes, not 7 major and 5 minor – where did you get that?
We get our 12 tone system from physics – partially. You can sort of get all 12 notes by multiplying a pitch’s frequency by 3/2, 12 times. Although it doesn’t quite work out so nicely, so we’ve made some compromises over the years. The major and minor scales (the basis of keys) are subsets of 7 of the 12 tones. They were chosen over history because people like how they sounded, but there are other scales/keys that exist, you just don’t hear them a lot.
This applies to western (European) music only.
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