Re: [Harp-L] Why is C not named A?

["lil Buddha" <ltlbuddha@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 9/21/06, Michael Rubin <rubinmichael@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> <snip>I have a student who claims that until he understands the purpose
> for history having named the notes the names they have, he cannot really
> learn.  He says it is just parroting.

<snip>
Language is learned by parroting and, at it's roots, is largely arbitrary.
Strangely, he seems to have no issues using language anyway.

If he is truly serious, below may be the best he will get.

> From Wikipedia. (this, of course, refers to western music and the Latin
Alphabet)
Naming the notes of a scale

In many musical circumstances, a specific note of the scale will be chosen
as the "tonic"--the central and most stable note of the scale. Relative to a
choice of tonic, the notes of a scale are often labeled with numbers
recording how many scale steps above the tonic they are. For example, the
notes of the C diatonic scale (C, D, E, F, G, A, B) can be labeled {1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7}, reflecting the choice of C as tonic. The term "scale degree"
refers to these numerical labels. In the C diatonic scale, with C chosen as
tonic, C is the first scale degree, D is the second scale degree, and so on.

Note that such labeling requires the choice of a "first" note; hence
scale-degree labels are not intrinsic to the scale itself, but rather to its
modes. For example, if we choose A as tonic, then we can label the notes of
the C diatonic scale using A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, D = 4, and so on. However,
the *difference* between two scale degrees is independent of the choice of
scale degree 1. Thus whether two notes are adjacent in a scale, or separated
by one note, does not depend on the mode under discussion.

The scale degrees of the traditional major scale can also be named using the
terms tonic <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_%28music%29>, supertonic,
mediant, subdominant, dominant, submediant,
leading-tone<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading-tone>(or
leading-note). Also commonly used is the "movable doh"
solfege <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solfege> naming convention in which
each scale degree is given a syllable. In the major scale, the solfege
syllables are: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So (or Sol), La, Ti (or Si), Do (or Ut).