Klarinet Archive - Posting 000226.txt from 2004/07

From: Umar Goldeli <umar@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Music theory.
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 08:44:22 -0400

Greetings Gentlefolk,

While slightly offtopic and not clarinet specific - this is something that
has been bothering me all day and I can't come up with an answer even
after hours of googling..

I'm hoping that the answer is simple and that the answer isn't just
"historical".

Well - the question is "Why A, B, C, D, E, F, G"? More specifically - why
is there only a semitone between (B and C) and (E and F)?

I looked up the mathematics behind the frequencies themselves and their
relationships etc and approximations to the Just scale and understand it
all makes perfect sense in terms of "degrees" - i.e. numbering from 0 to
11 or 1 to 12 and the doubling of the frequency from octave to octave..

But there was no reference at all to why A to G were chosen - it is always
just stated as fact.

Wouldn't it have been a lot easier to use A to F? That way we could have
A,A#,B,B#,C,C#,D,D#,E,E#,F,F# - and that would still be 12 degrees and on
a piano keyboard there wouldn't be a missing black key between B/C and E/F
etc?

So why choose an odd number of letters and make such an exception between
b/c and e/f? Is there a logical reason for it?

Sorry if this question is odd - but it really has been bothering me.

Thanks a heap!

//umar.

PS. For those interestied in some of the maths behind the 12 degrees etc
etc:

http://home.austin.rr.com/jmjensen/musicTheory.html

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