Different scales and keys on the same page?
Hi. First Thanks for the use of the software. I am very new to music
being 51 and just in the last few months picking up a musical
instrument for the first time ever in my life and realy enjoying it. I
have started learning to play the flute and last week my teacher gave
me the F majour pentatonic scale to practice. I have used MuseScore to
create it and was hoping to put on the same page the F, G and C major
scales and some arpeggios but could not see an easy way of doing this
using teh appropriate key signuatures.
Any help if you could spare a moment would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Martin
martin@long.co.nz
Comments
Read key signature
Dear Martin,
It's never too late to start anything (including music). The first thing you have to accept, is that you have less time to catch up with those who have been doing music for years.
The good news is, that you, as an adult, are able to select, whether you really need to know what you've made to beleive you need to know. I don't want to go into the theory of keys and key signatures (that have masqueraded as importand foundation of 'theory' for centuries) -what you want is to write down music what you hear in your head, and what you hope will be read, played or sung by others and and it will sound the same.
You know that a 'clef' (eg. treble clef) defines the names of a note (A,B,C etc.). An 'accidental' (sharp, flat, etc.) modifies the note (e.g. instead of you playing a B natural, you play a B flat). The key signature is only a 'short-hand' extension of the clef (eg. 1 flat); it tells you that instead of playing B natural, you should always play B flat (through the piece, or until you encounter a 'natural' sign - and accidental cancelling the flatness). It tells you nothing about the piece.
I assume that you tried to write a pice of music, not just three scales (that, in themselves would be pretty boring). But if you encounter that you need to play all the notes of the mentioned 3 scales, there is no such key signature that would make it possible. You can only write them down by means of using accidentals relative to the key signature. But that should not be a problem. After all, no-one in the world is able to hear whether a B flat is written a B on the staff with one flat key signature, or as a flat accidental followed by a B.
Don't fall to the trick, that one (or the other) is the 'right way'....
In reply to Different scales and keys on the same page? by drikanb
drikanb is correct that key signatures are not important to the typical listener ("no one in the world is able to hear" a flat next to the note verses a flat in the key signature).
However, I find scales, keys, and chords useful concepts for writing and playing music. Understanding the scales, keys, and chords helps me recognize patterns and relationships between notes more easily.
I tend to think that enjoyment and interest is more important than a desire to "catch up" with younger players. Anyway, here's to many more years of music!
In reply to drikanb is correct that key by David Bolton
Dear David,
Thanks for your comment, especially for the extra set of clear definitions of 'patterns' and 'relationships'.
On a different note, are you one of the project masters behind MusicScore? Forgive me if my assumption is wrong.
In reply to Dear David, Thanks for your by drikanb
I have become quite involved with MuseScore over the past couple of years. Although I occasionally write code, I mostly help with testing, report bugs, help maintain the English handbook, or anything else that I notice needs doing and I am able to help with.
When writing music on musescore, if you find key sigs confusing, then simply stick to C major and A minor for the key of your piece. I understand how key sigs work and such, and I STILL like to write in C major and A minor more just because it's easier for me to see/figure out everything when I'm trying to write down an idea. Just making it sound good is the first thing you should worry about. Worry about enharmonic notes, key signatures later and other more complicated parts later. This is somewhat along the concept that you need to learn the alphabet and how to read before you learn proper spellings and grammar.
In reply to When writing music on by Michael M
C major - a minor....
Though I cannot claim a long history of involvement in the MuseScore community, I feel, the community could gain from a forum/blog clarifying what is relevant and what is irrelevant from the aspect of musical notation. I am brewing over, what form it could take and hope, many of you'll be joining some of my discussions.
If there is no key signature (ie: neither sharp nor flat), it simply means that every note has to be read as 'natural' (unless an 'accidental' modifies it). Thus it only relates to the way, the notes are written - independent of any particular piece of music.
C major or a minor, on the other hand, means that the tonic (the central 'note of gravity') of a given piece is the C or a (and the other notes are specially related to this given tonic). Thus, it expresses a kind of emotional content of pieces of music sharing the same generalised structure. The key signature may or may not express what the tonality of the pies actually is. In other words, in pieces eg. in F major (with a key signature of one flat valid throughout the whole piece) there may be long passages in C major (where the tonic - the 'home note' - of the passage is C) - and in such instances all the B naturals have to be notated with a 'natural sign' to cancel the flat of the key-signature)
Michael, I see your point that you find not using predefined sharps or flats more practical for writing down your ideas - in fact - it has been a trend in the notation of so-called contemporary classical music for the last 50-60 years. However, I doubt, if all your music is in C major or a minor!
But if your music sounds as you imagined, who dou you want to convince of the importance of what key the piece was written in? Your audience? Your professors? Your sponsors? Or, yourself?
I only wanted to make you realise, the theory is something you can converse on for long. But it has nothing to do with actual music. To illustrate my claim:
From the above argument, have you any idea what my music is like?
In reply to When writing music on by Michael M
A digital computer, being the mathematical tool that it is, can of course transpose a piece of music that has initially been written in terms of "C Major (a.k.a. A Minor)" into any other key(s) you might care to name.
Armed with this luxury, "you, the composer" can prepare your material in whatever fashion may be most comfortable for you at the time. The computer can then quite-effortlessly transpose the material into whatever keys are most appropriate for the players.
Eventually, though, it does come down to "the players." They need to have material that's written in keys that are easy for them and for their respective instruments. Furthermore, they expect to have material that conforms to what they're used to seeing. Even though "everyone knows that D-sharp is the same as E-flat," you'll want to make it your business to be sure that the score that you present to them is consistent with the familiar norms that are taken for granted by experienced players of that instrument. Call it "professional courtesy ..."
Welcome to a life-long fascination. (I'm not too many years behind you on Life's Journey.) You'll find that MuseScore is a great "word processor" for musical scores.
You can "drag and drop" key-signatures onto measures, anywhere you want them. But it's a good idea to "plan your moves ahead of time." Put the key-signatures down first, when the measures are empty, then add the notes. (In other words, if you're going to do something, like a key-signature change, that "will affect everything down-stream," do this before there is actually anything "down-stream.")
... I'm not saying that you have to do this, only that the workflow from your point-of-view is much more likely to be satisfactory and intuitive, to the extent that you do. (It is, after all, "only a computer...")
If you make many changes, sometimes it's helpful to close the file and then re-open it. Doing so obliges MuseScore to "re-draw" the entire score, as it were, "from scratch." All of the notation in the entire score, from stem to stern, will be recalculated and redisplayed. Eyeball-check the entire result to make sure that everything is exactly as you want it.
In reply to Good news... it is quite easy by Mike Robinson
Hi Mike, let me join you in welcoming MuseScore. In your earlier comment - writing a piece first in "C Major" and use the computer to transpose it later - is a very old concept in music notation. If you only learn to play one scale on a wind instrument and extend the physical length of its tubingyou will be able to play the learnt scale, but it will sound transposed down by an interval determined by the length of the insert. This is the concept behind the 'transposing instruments'.
You are right in saying, there is a difference between D sharp and E flat. Exactly so, as between 'two' and 'too' ("There is a train at two to two, too"). How to learn the context is open to discussion, but there is a generally held view of the contextual relation to the 'scales'.
With reference to 'which comes first', it is up to you why you would want to chose a particular key (and the associated key signature) for your composition. The compositional reasons behind Bach's Wohltemperiertes Klavier (2 preludes and 2 fugues in all the Major and minor keys - using all the possible key signatures) was only a demonstration of a technical novelty, namely, the 'chromatic tuning'. Chopin's 24 Préludes (although paying hommage to Bach) capitalised on traditions of associating certain keys with certain moods. ('Many flats' for instance were associated with 'Funeral march').
It is, indeed, good news that, MuseScore provides the facility for a composer to choose any key he/she fancies. But there is a more important question, whether any key is justified (the proof of the pudding is, whether a piece would really lose from its impact by being performed in another key)....
In reply to Hi Mike, let me join you in by drikanb
this topic is to be linked with temperament choice....about which one find lots of articles and considerations in OUP Early Music....
I won't argue (and I'm not arguing) any of the subtle musical fine-points that you are alluding to. :-)
My point in the original post is simply that your first concern must be to de-fang any obstacle that might be show-stopping you from reaching that first and most critical step: getting music out of your head and onto a piece of paper. Somehow. Maybe not perfectly. Maybe you know that this-or-that phrase is wrong, but ... you've caught it. It's on paper. (And in an industry-standard digital file.)
If you feel "show-stopped" by the question of key signatures, then write the thing in C Major. Just capture every one of those phrases in C-major. To slightly oversimplify: "subsequently re-keying a phrase" is a simple matter of selecting the measures, hitting the "Up" or "Down" keys a few times, and then dropping-in the key signature that eliminates the greatest number of sharp-and-flat symbols. Later. Capture that score. Make a permanent copy of this first (and every other!) draft. Disk space is cheap; effort is not.
Once you've caught that fish, the computer (using this and/or other software tools) can help you with any number of rote tasks: editing it, transposing it, shifting to modes, giving it "swing," separating parts, and of course, making beautiful readable scores. You're on your way now. The fish is out of the lake and in the bucket, never to escape.
Yes, absolutely, the various keys and modes and such are very different; "D-sharp and E-flat are in fact not the same." Blah, blah, blah. ;-) Yes,eventually you'll wind up making a creative choice with regard to this (and many other things). They are, indeed, fundamental musical decisions. And the computer is ready to help you execute them. But all of that is arranging ... scoring ... perfecting ... re-writing. It's like selecting just the right wine and cheese to go with your new fish dinner. Your meal will not be quite so perfect without them, but: nothing pairs well with "the one that got away."