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A lot of musicians know that we can play a significant scale simply using the white notes of the piano and that scale is "C major". C significant is dealt with like the "default scale", it has no flats or sharps, just white notes. However why "C"? Would it not make more sense for this "default" scale to start on A, similar to the alphabet?
Here's my video on the "German H":.
and my video on Do-re-mi:.
SOURCES:.
LivingPianosVideos, Why is C not Called A?:.
MusicCorner, Why C?: The Convoluted History of Note Names:.
Two Minute Music Theory, Why C Significant Has No Sharps or Flats: Why C Significant Has No Sharps or Flats.
Early Music Sources – Gregorian Chant:.
Early Music Sources – Solmization:.
Early Music Sources – Modes:.
Odd Quartet – The Origins of Music – The Story of Guido:.
12tone, why do notes have names?
Translation of Boethius' De institutione musica:.
HistoryOfMusicTheory – Hexachords:.
And, an additional unique thanks goes to Peter Keller, Douglas Lind, Vidad Flowers, Ivan Pang, Waylon Fairbanks, Jon Dye, Austin Russell, Christopher Ryan, Toot & Paul Peijzel, the channel's Patreon saints!.
ASSISTANCE ME ON PATREON:.
0:00 Why C significant, not A major?
1:30 the Diatonic scale.
3:25 Latin alphabet for note names.
5:30 Where are the black notes?
6:27 Why C significant, not A significant?
6:48 my PIANO course with ArtMaster.
7:45 What about Do-re-mi?
10:07 Outro.
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My forever though has been; Keeping the presently accepted tones(C Major scale) why in the world didn’t They name it A Major. Maybe they just loved the “relative minor”, which I believe belongs to “C”.
As a guitarist I appreciate F being the hardest chord
Play F to pay respects
A# major. Root on the 1nd fret of A-string. Similarly B major on the 2nd fret. It’s killing me to this day.
@@KrwiomoczBogurodzicytry playing it with an open G shape
@@KrwiomoczBogurodzicyjust play moveable major bar chord shape on the 6th fret
@@JA-ut8fitry 3rd finger 3rd fret on the bottom E string, 2nd finger 2nd fret A string, 4th finger 3rd fret top E string then it frees up your 1st finger to move on to the F.
Practice moving from open C to G then F.
I’ve always wondered why the “first” note is marked by C. For me it’s “Do”.
and B is H in many countries
when I was younger, for a long period of time I actually did think the white notes started with A. So I was accidentally playing songs in the wrong key completely. I felt so stupid when I realised I was playing it all wrong 🤦
😂
I don’t know about everyone else, but I’d love to see more history themed videos like this! I love all your content, but this scratches an itch for me that I didn’t know needed scratching.
That’s a great way to put it — I agree!
I’ve seen similar snippets of history. David has finally answered My question of Why CMaj is actually named (CMaj) .
As someone who loves the letter H, I find the German H system kinda… weird actually, as I learned music theory from your videos and got used to the B note. Not kidding, and I absolutely love them.
Although one thing I have to add here is that in Poland, solfege is used commonly to teach children the notes of the C major scale. Like 5yo children, not primary school aged. Then as they get older, they learn the German H system.
When you click on a video thinking you’ll get an interesting little factoid about the piano keyboard and you get 15 centuries of music history. This is why I love this channel 😂
The sharp/flat note keys were added when they started making instruments that were a pain to re-tune between performances (like you would do with e.g. a harp) but also too bulky to swap out for a different instrument (like you would do with a flute). The pipe organ is the poster child for this: changing its intonation would take several hours of swapping out pipes (some of which are larger than a man), and swapping it out for a different organ entirely would mean moving the concert to a different venue. So you just build the organ with pipes for every note you’re ever going to need. It’s *easier* that way. This is also where well and eventually equal temperament came from: the ancient Greeks used just intonation, exclusively, but that’s not practicable for a pipe organ, and it’s not extremely convenient for a harpsichord or piano either.
These days we used A440 TTET even for a lot of _electronic_ instruments, despite the fact that it would not be difficult to set them up with a whole library of intonations and switch between them at the push of a button. We don’t try to do that because A) they’re often playing alongside traditional instruments, and B) most musicians have never studied how to write key changes involving a shift from one just intonation to another.
Merci beaucoup. Just to be precise the French speaking part of Switzerland also used the Do Ré system.
I’m listening to a lecture about a singer who learned early music Solmization and he talked about the Guidovian hand. The relationship of the hand and the vocal chords is probably genetically imprinted on our nervous system. I wouldn’t know since in all my choir classes teachers told me to move my lips and not make a sound.
If you use A as the starting note, the intervals B to C (a semitone) and E to F (a semitone) make the 12 note chromatic system symmetrical in terms of the intervals
There is some prescident for A being the lowest not on the piano itself. The lowest note on the piano is A. It’s A-0.
Note on everything said about Ancient Greek scales: “…we think.” It’s very confusing, and there’s disagreement among the handful of scholars who study this stuff. The texts in question are fairly late and obscure, so we don’t really know for sure what they meant, and even less how earlier Greek musicians conceived of the scales. That said, David picked what I think is the best and most sensible interpretation. 👌
I was wondering if the question might be biased because the note system was around long before the invention of the piano. Today, of course, it’s easiest to show these theory concepts using a piano keyboard, much more so than demonstrating with a violin or a flute. The white keys on a standard piano are “tuned” to C Major but they could conceivably be different. The notes of the scale are describing all kinds of instrumental and vocal music, not just piano.
One of the best music channels on YouTube. Your creativity in thinking of interesting topics to cover reminds me of two set violin. Not necessarily in the subject matter, but the consistency of innovative content.
Thank you!
Funny, I grew up in Sweden and dabbled in music like most people do when they’re young. When I moved to the US I started taking piano lessons and I could have sworn that there was an H on the piano. But my memory must have failed me. Now I just had a revelation about this missing H 😅
H is also in the German system
Using C as the default scale reminds me of computers. The main hard drive of your system is not A:, it is C:. Why? Because A: was used earlier for floppy drives, which were still in use when hard drives came out, and since B: was also a floppy drive, C: became the default hard drive of your computer.
Nice comparison!
Boethius was quite a philosopher in his own right. The Consolation of Philosophy is a must-read for anyone interested in medieval philosophy. I’m surprised to see he wrote a treatise on music, too. I’ll have to pick that one up. I went to college for a degree in music education and while we learned music history, it was primarily the history of classical music, essentially from the Renaissance period on. I’m enjoying these videos which show the more ancient history of how modern music came to be. I look forward to seeing more.
Absol ‘ut’ ly great David
You go where few try to go.
Thank you for this.
Beautifully explained. This video makes me want to learn more about music theory.
Finally, a good explanation for the various modes!