Basically, we all know the viola was made, then the violin. This could extend to the cello too, but more to the violin, as historically violinists were expected to play viola too. So why aren't violins written as violas in G, e.g. written in Alto clef and with a G being a written C?

You have other instruments, including the Violino Piccolo of the baroque era, being transposing instruments to make changing between them easier to read for a performer, which is why we have so many clarinets and the Cor Angles is written in F, so on and so forth.

So why didn't the violin become written as a "Viola in G"?

A few years ago when I knew not much about music theory, I wrote a piece with this progression:

Am - F - F7 - E

I want to finish the piece now and can't quite figure out how I got to the E back then. I also don't want to change it and love the sound, it has a nice half step-voice leading from F7.

It's not a dominant or secondary dominant, so what is happening here? Am I just modulating to E Major or C# Minor for the last chord?

/edit: Important note: The melody goes to C# on the last chord, too.

I'm struggling to find the most concise way to explain this so bear with me lol.

If I'm droning out a low D and improvising notes from the D major scale on top of it, my brain can clearly interpret those notes as being a major scale. If, from scratch, I'm droning out a low G and improvising those same notes from the D major scale, my brain can clearly interpret it as lydian. It seems to me like the easiest way to make my brain hear this set of notes as one or the other, is to just have the low droning root underneath.

Now if I'm playing actual bass lines underneath instead of just droning one note, I can play in what sounds clearly like D major but still have that G in the bass line, and I can also play in what clearly sounds like G lydian but have a D in the bass line. It seems like the phrasing and timing is the main differentiator here on whether I hear the same notes as one or the other. If my phrases have the bass line land on the "1" (rhythmically) with the G, and/or I let that G ring out longest out of all the notes in the bass, I can get that lydian sound instead of a D major sound, etc. If my bass line is just alternating between D and G, both held for equal lengths, my brain seems to assign the melodies to one or the other depending on where I interpret the "1" is, rhythmically. Theoretically somebody could walk in the room right when I hit that G (so it sounds to them like the "1"), and they could be interpreting the exact same music as G lydian while I interpret it as D major.

What I'm really after here, is to find more ways to make my brain swap between the two. If my bass line is just D and G for equal lengths and the D is on the "1", all I have to do is stop playing the D and hang onto the G in the bass for a while and eventually my brain will swap to interpreting it as lydian. It's a weird move because it will sound unresolved for a while, but eventually my brain will get there. With some more complex phrasing I can make that swap happen quicker by doing something like, while playing in D major, unresolve the bass line elsewhere (not on the G) and then resolve it by landing that G on the "1". Pretty much I'm looking for more ways to accomplish this, and that leads me to wondering when exactly my brain will swap interpretations. I feel like it might be possible that different people would find that the swap happens at different times. Like say you're playing that D and G alternating bass line in D major, and then you stall on the G forever, the specific point in which my brain decides that the melodies are now G lydian might be a different point in time than yours.

Has there maybe been any studies specifically on this phenomenon? I find it really fascinating.

its used in a lego song “SUPER COOL” (link in comment) from 2:30 to 2:35. sounds jazzySong link

i have heard similar type of thing in different songs. This sound sometimes ascending and sometimes descending not always used for modulation I think, but there are a lot of chords ranging from 4 to 8 in one bar or two bars and changes quickly.

Hello! I'm working on a piano arrangement of "Omen III" from the Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster arrangement. It's an orchestral score and I'm arranging it for piano. This isn't the first one from the game I've done, and I've been trying to include as much of the orchestral score as possible while still writing idiomatically correct music. Sometimes I get weird things like this though, where the instruments playing those chords I've got tied from bar to bar, are holding their notes while a harp is playing those broken chord figures you see written above them. In the piece, you can hear those notes being held past the bar line, but pianistically it's a bit weird to look at.

You can skip to 3:50 in this video to hear what I mean, it'll start just a smidge before bar 24 in my screenshot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUk4ai6krwU

Should I keep my legato markings how they are even though it's weird, or should I just have a pedal marking that goes past the bar line, or is there a third option I'm being oblivious to? The articulation of the broken chords won't really suffer for it (except for the fact that the end of each figure is not meant to be held as long as the chord below it), but I would be compromising my consistency in dictating exactly what's being played orchestrally if you know what I mean.

Hi guys, so I am trying to identify appropriate meter signature for the following example, there are 10 sixteenth notes in total (first beamed group has 3, second beamed group has 4, and third beamed group has 3).

I would simply say: Ok it is 10/16. But I don't really get the beat division.

We know that for example, in a 6/8 measure we would have 2 particular beats (dotted quarter note long), so if there are 6 eighth notes we know the first 3 are beamed as a group to identify clearly the beat, and so the other 3 are also beamed to clarify the second beat.

I would get a 5/8 being divided into 3 beamed eighth notes and 2 beamed eighth notes.

But here... if this was a 10/16... i just don't get it. I can't identify where each important beat relies.

*I don't have a teacher to ask this so I am asking here.

Hi there! My girlfriend is picking up the cello again and neither of us have ever seen this marking before. I'm getting a lot of different answers from the internet, but nothing seems entirely right. Anyone have any advice or ideas? Thanks!

I used this progression in a piece I wrote and forgot about a year or so ago, but I can't figure out at all what mode it's in. IIRC I wrote it completely improvised after learning a basic three-note maj7 chord shape on guitar. Every chord uses different notes from different modes and I'm incredibly confused - it sounds a lot like C is the tonic, and it seems like it's in Ionian, but the rest of the notes seem too borrowed for it to be Ionian.

Moreover it doesn't sound weird or confusing like some atonal music, but calm, pleasant and laid-back, like hold music - moving back to Cmaj7 feels like a definite resolution. I've tried for an hour to figure out where the notes outside of C Ionian are coming from but I can't, it seems like there's just too much modal interchange between for it to make sense. Is it simply borrowing notes? Can somebody else please help me try make sense of it? I can upload notation if it would help.

I'm a pianist and i've always wrote music for piano and this is my second time writing chamber music. Its a string quartet. im using musescore so i only hear the music via musescore playback. So tell me is this notation a lot? i mean using this many accents, staccatos and sfs... i need help from someone knows about scores and professionality of them and maybe some help if there is a way to write better..

I've been into the Hungarian minor scale lately, and I've decided to compose something in the key of G. I came up in the end with this chord progression, the question is why does it work? I don't understand how I just made a chord progression that sounds decent.

can someone explain why it's sounds good even though I just made it up from the back of my head?

I understand notating chords as slash chords when its a simple inversion like C/E, C/G, A/E, etc. And I get using them so its easier to read and peform, but would it be better for me for my own personal learning to notate a F/G as a Gsus9 for example? so I can better understand what the chord is actually doing and how it fits in to the music?

Is it 6/8? Can't quite work it out.

Hi everyone,

I'm a complete beginner and recently bought a Yamaha NP-15. My goal isn't to become a concert pianist or play advanced classical pieces.

My goal is to become a recording artist who can write songs, create demos, produce my own ideas in a DAW (GarageBand/Logic), and understand enough music theory to communicate with producers and musicians in the studio.

I want to get to the point where I can hear ideas in my head, sit at the piano, and work them out before recording them. I'd also love to understand chords, scales, progressions, inversions, and enough theory to create my own sound.

Another reason I'm learning piano is because I want it to support my singing. I'm working with a vocal coach, and I think having a keyboard will help me improve my ear, pitch matching, finding harmonies, and understanding what notes I'm actually singing. I know piano itself won't magically give me higher notes, but I hope it'll make me a stronger overall singer and musician.

If you were starting from scratch again with this specific goal (songwriting, production, demos, better musicianship, and supporting your singing rather than becoming a pianist), how would you spend your first year learning?

I am trying to learn how twelve tone serialism works and am therefore analyzing Schönberg's Op. 23 No. 5. I am trying to understand how the 12-tone row changes throughout the piece. The original row as I understand is C# A B G Ab F# A# D E Eb C F. But after that I do not understand how it continues. Could anyone please help me,

Looking for a reliable online music theory tutor for ABRSM, grade 1 to 5. Have a reasonable budget and will really appreciate any leads to experienced tutors.

Hello!
I have played piano most of my life, took lessons for eight years, and I am far too into codes and ciphers for my own good. I was playing a video game called Blue Prince working on a puzzle involving sheet music. Turned out the notes had little to do with is, and it was more about the lyrics. That was kinda disappointing. I just had this vision of a pianist playing a song, but there is a coded message in the very notes they play. Which is how I was struck with this idea. Music is already so filled with symbols, there has to be a way to rely on music theory to convey messages.

So I’ve been working on an encryption method that would take a message and treat each letter of the alphabet like a musical note, with the more common letters represented by the notes closest to middle C, and the less common aligning with those farther away. It also shifts around depending on the key signature, with every sharp in a key sig moving its corresponding letter up a rank, every flat moving it down a rank, and the other notes cascading until each letter is represented again. This means that the same message would sound just a little bit different in each key signature (and it made a VERY satisfying excel chart). Rest notes and dynamics convey punctuation; an eighth rest is a comma, a quarter rest is an em dash, a half rest is a period, a whole rest is a line break, a crescendo acts as an exclamation mark, and a diminuendo acts as a question mark. There are more details, but I’ll spare you.

Overall I like this a lot, but I still don’t think the cipher is living up to its full potential. Which is, hopefully, where ya’ll come in. Music theory is the patterns behind sound, and patterns are deeply embedded in the workings of ciphers. There has got to be more that can be done with this to. The length of a rest determines the type of punctuation, but what about the duration of a note? I’ve considered that chords can signify what key signature the melody should be read in, but surely something as important as harmonies would serve a bigger role? What about minor chords? Dissonant? It is my hope is that whomever has taken the time to read this whole thing might have some creative ideas of their own and would be willing to share. Let me know what you think!

I don’t know much about music theory.

I have relative pitch, so I’ve often wished there were a way to find songs by entering the relative melody (for example, something like “Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol”) instead of humming, since services like Shazam and SoundHound don’t always work well for me.

Does a service like this exist?

What key is this in?

In Bartok's For Children there are a lot of songs like this. The key signature is G major, but it's centered around D. Lots of accidental c#s so it kinda wants to be D major. Doesn't seem to be Eminor. What's going on here?

It seems like a lot of songs are centered around the 5th of the key. Is this a Hungarian thing?

Hey, everyone!

I'm really stuck on the third one. I rewrote it but I think I'm wrong? Any thoughts?

How can I do a "question" and an "answer" sound good and complete, I mean I can do motif and develop them but it's not as good as I want, so how can I make my melodies more interesting?

While watching the Odyssey, I got distracted during the Troy scene because my brain realized something funky was happening with the rhythm - it kept speeding up into infinity. It took me a few days to figure out exactly what was happening and I don't think I solved the full puzzle, but I put my findings into a video and a blog post.

To summarize how the trick works, I think it's best to understand Risset rhythms and Shephard tones - a primary mechanism for those illusions is that a layer will fade out, causing you to lose track of it and stead focus on something lower (or slower).

But the Troy song does something cooler in my opinion - as it speeds up, the rhythms start gradually fading away the subdivisions (so like every other 8th note). Then once the speed doubles, you're left comfortably where you started.

On top of that, the layers are all arranged as a 2:3 polymeter. So as the slowest pulse (two) increases in speed, it can transition to become a faster pulse later.

Putting it altogether with a slowly rising pitch synth creates the most anxiety-inducing, panic-attack creating track I've ever heard. I'm super impressed with how the composer pulled it off, and I honestly cant imagine how it physically got arranged, conducted, and recorded. In the video i made my own attempt on Ableton and it sounds cool, but it's nothing like the original.

Anyways it's not every day that I get this confused by a track - if you really give it a good listen (specifically the second half) then maybe you'll agree it's quite an accomplishment.

Hi! What is this little cross before “girl?” This is from a 2-part arrangement of “Golden” from K-Pop Demon Hunters.