What no E# ?

but there is

E#=F
B#=C

C'mon is it really that simple :?: :roll:

Well sure, in a nutshell it is. There is plenty more you can say about it, but when you get down to it that is all there is.

If you are approaching an intersection from the north and I'm approaching it from the south, we will look at turning east differently. You'd call the direction "left". I'd call it "right". We'd both end up going in the same direction.

Because if we used B# and E# this is what we would end up with:

C# D# E# F# G# A# B# for the key of C#.

It's easier to think Db.

Db Eb Fb G Ab Bb C

You don't even want me to write out the key of B#. :lol:

If your asking why an E# isn't a seperate note from F. I don't know.

Why is the standard distance between railroad rails in the U.S. four-feet, eight-and-a-half inches? :wink: :lol:

When I graduated from college they said it was because of two horse's a*s! :lol: :lol: :lol:

If your asking why an E# isn't a seperate note from F.
This is the "can of worms" question! The fact of the matter is, E# and F ARE different notes, it's just that we've adopted a system, called "even temperament", which "fuses" E# and F into one note. The same applies to all sharps and flats - A# is not the same as Bb, other than in an even tempered world.

If your asking why an E# isn't a seperate note from F. I don't know.

Why is the standard distance between railroad rails in the U.S. four-feet, eight-and-a-half inches? :wink: :lol:

When I graduated from college they said it was because of two horse's a*s! :lol: :lol: :lol:

This is in fact the question I was asking.
We seem to have E / F / F# / G / G# / A / A#/ B / C / C# / D / D#

So why no E# or B#

If your asking why an E# isn't a seperate note from F.
This is the "can of worms" question! The fact of the matter is, E# and F ARE different notes, it's just that we've adopted a system, called "even temperament", which "fuses" E# and F into one note. The same applies to all sharps and flats - A# is not the same as Bb, other than in an even tempered world.

Not to hi-jack this thread, but could a person with perfect pitch tell the difference between E# and F? You would think they would be able to adopt their own system with a slide. :lol:

This is in fact the question I was asking.
We seem to have E / F / F# / G / G# / A / A#/ B / C / C# / D / D#

So why no E# or B#

Look at a Piano - no black ones between B and C and between E and F. Well this does not really answer your question but it is a "proof" that this is the way we (or rather somebody) have chosen to organise our scales. When we listen to the kind of scale we are used to in Major there is only one half tone between the 3rd and the 4th and between the 7th and the 8th.

Off course, if we like to, we can divide the scale in 14 instead of 12 and make a new scale with one whole tone between each step. Would've sounded pretty weired to our ears I guess.

Lars

Not to hi-jack this thread, but could a person with perfect pitch tell the difference between E# and F? You would think they would be able to adopt their own system with a slide.

In relation to other notes yes. Otherwise it's the same note in terms of sound.

Yeah, it sure is a can of worms question. The answer is in history...

The notes haven't always had names. Until about 1200 years ago, musicians learned all songs 'by ear', and we didn't worry about different notes.

Then some monks decided there were an awful lot of chants to remember, and it would make sense to write them down. In the beginning of that, they just put dots on a page - if the dots went up, the melody went up... it wasn't used to learn tunes, but as a memory jogger if you happened to forget a tune you'd learned by ear ("oh yeah - you go UP on that word")

About a thousand years ago we added a staff - lines that showed just how far up you were going from another note. Now it made sense to name the notes, and two different schools of thought sprang up. One said everything goes from the starting note: do-re-mi. The other said everything goes from a reference pitch: A-B-C.

The do-re-mi system isn't key sensitive. There's no need for a 'mi sharp' - whatever keynote you happen to begin with, mi will be the third scale tone and fa will be the note above that. Do is 'moveable', and all the other tones move with it.

The reference pitch system is key senstive - if you start on a higher pitch, you start from a different letter. That really wasn't much of a problem early on - wherever you were performing had some instrument like a harp or a bell that happened to be their local reference. That actually persisted for hundreds of years... church organs throughout Europe can vary in the pitch of 'middle C' by as much as a perfect fifth!

About 4-500 years ago that composers started to change keys within a composition. That's when sharps and flats really start to matter. It's only then that we really figured out there's a note between C and D, but no note between E and F.

So the system of letter names has nothing to do with the chromatic scale, which is a definate shortcoming. To make matters worse, in many tuning methods there is a difference between E# and F - as Greybeard noted. We only solved that puzzle by 'splitting the difference' and settling on one tone within the last 135 years, believe it or not... our measurement devices weren't good enough to accurately tune in equal temperament until then.

And yes, NETZOK, people with perfect pitch can tell the difference. I've met a few singers and one violinist who will produce the right pitch on demand to play in equal or just temperaments. The notes are written the same in each system... but a pitch like 'E' will actually vary depending on what key you're in - so E# is not only different from F, it's different from E# in other keys!

(as an aside, I've heard the horse/railroad story too with a bit more detail: when they were prototyping steam engines and needed to lay test rails, they laid them in the ruts created by wagons - a separation of two horses' behinds)

If they asked you what do you mean by 2+2 you will just say 4.

If they ask you to prove it......Keep trying :wink:

Rahul

(After reading NoteBoat)

There ! I said the answer couldn't be that easy Nick. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Rahul, you say 2+2=4, so it follows that 2X2=4, right?

Wrong....if you use logarithms (are they still taught, or are they redundant since the birth of the calculator?) it works out at 3.999 - and you'd get full marks for that in a maths exam....

:D :D :D

Vic