so, question for the musicians in the room

[celestia@tech.lgbt]

so, question for the musicians in the room

why do people compose in different major scales when they all sound the same, only pitch-shifted?

having to learn all 12 major scales each with its own unique set of quirks sounds like a fun exercise in self-torture, don't get me wrong, but I'm surprised

is it just edgy musicians not wanting to use the "normie" scale, or is there something that really makes different major scales convey a different mood? my understanding is that most people can't even tell the difference when you pitch-shift something

[celestia@tech.lgbt]

@ielenia oh, right! that's a very good point I didn't think of it

[sugui@owo.cafe]

@celestia mmh maybe because musicians are perfectionists and also they can do tell the difference between them? So they pick the one who sounds better for them in the scale, although many people won't tell the difference. But not sure, just a reflection

[stage7@owo.cafe]

@celestia I've wanted to show you something for some time now. A piece of music that truly touches my heart and twists the sense of "harmony" and "scales" to a level rarely seen outside jazz. And it was composed by a 25 year old.

If you are familiar with the circle of fifths and I woke your curiosity, I can tell you which piece it is.

[aperture@snug.moe]

@ielenia @celestia yeah a lot of it is coloration, historic and modern

- carrie

[mir@ice.ch3.st]

@ielenia@ck.catwithaclari.net @celestia@tech.lgbt this is also true of stringed instruments, for the record. to the extent that i can usually tell what notes on a violin track are just from the timbre

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@celestia because they don't sound the same

[mook@possum.city]

@celestia@tech.lgbt this feels like a troll, by the same logic a C chord and a G chord 'sounds the same'

On guitar it's trivially easy to do different scales, it's the same pattern moved up and down

[celestia@tech.lgbt]

@mook it's not a troll question, it is a genuine one and I'm trying to understand

[mook@possum.city]

@celestia@tech.lgbt the notes sound different, they just sound the same to you

[celestia@tech.lgbt]

@mook sorry, I don't think this is being very productive I'd rather drop the topic at this point

[celestia@tech.lgbt]

@mir @ielenia yup yup! thank you both ^^ it makes sense

I've been learning piano so I was using that as a reference, and of course not every instrument is the same hehe

[celestia@tech.lgbt]

@aeva ok but I want to understand why

because I can play a B major scale to someone without a trained ear and ask them: "what did I just play", and every single time I've tried people will be convinced it's "C D E F G A B"

and even when you do "train" your ear, most people don't have absolute pitch, so by pitch alone it'd be very hard to tell the difference?

[kathee_hds@tech.lgbt]

@Sugui @celestia I think even if you can't tell the difference, you notice it after hearing 10 songs that are in the same scale and suddenly hear one in a different scale? like, it conveys the same feelings but it doesn't feel as repetitive? We could do a test and make several playlists by scale and then try to listen to one of them and see how we feel / if we notice when the scale changes?

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@celestia play bflat major for them and ask them. then, if they say its c major, play c major for them and ask them what that was.

think about it this way, forget scales for a moment and just think about sound in terms of an arbitrary frequency spectrum. 55hz and 14080khz are both "A" but they don't sound the same at all. like you could play a major scale using either as the tonic but they would sound very different despite both being "A major"

[mook@possum.city]

@celestia@tech.lgbt i'm sorry if i came off harsh, just woke and grumpy, C just gets boring after awhile, and there's subtle emotional differences between notes, but it doesn't make that much a difference

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@celestia now if you were to play a bunch of notes kind of randomly but working your way up the spectrum with just something simple like a sine wave to provide the voicing, you'll notice that the timbre feels different between any two points, and there's sort of bands that are almost octave sized but not quite. The most significant ones in my opinion are the two / three that overlap with human speech, a rank or two of "above that" and "below that".