Music Theory to the Next Level

[Armin]

Note: If you wish to read this topic and understand, you need to know basic music theory.

Have you ever wondered why in the major scale, there is a half step interval between B and C, along with E and F? Have you ever wondered why there are only 7 notes in a scale? Well, I have been messing around with scales, and I think I've come up with an answer: each type of scale uses it's own note bank. Keep in mind here that all of the notes are still the same tone wise, and there are still 12 notes, yet each note just has a different name.

In the major scale, there are 7 notes, correct? There are 12 notes total in the note bank, correct? If you distribute the 12 notes evenly so that there's a whole step between each letter, it'd be ABCDEF, and there would only be 6 notes in the scale. With the major scale using 7 notes, you would need to name the note bank differently than ABCDEF because you would need 7 different notes to choose from.

Now, what is the difference between a scale with 7 notes and a scale with 6 notes? It's all about interval notation naturally creating the different types of chords. In a scale with 7 notes, there are 3 major chords, 3 minors chords, and 1 diminished chord. In a scale with 6 notes where every single interval is a major interval, you'd end up with every single chord in the scale being augmented. The Pythagoreans created the major scale to have the half step intervals between B and C, and E and F because it gives you 3 major and 3 minor chords, which are extremely easy to work with and sound good to the ear. It's impossible to have a scale without augmented or diminished chords, so I guess they had to sacrafice something.

After thinking up all of this myself, my guitar teacher told me that Metallica has made up their own scale that they use (don't know what they call it), which has 3 tritones in it. This inspired me to create my own scale, but when I thought of it even more, it made me realize that there are a large amount of possible scales, and an even larger amount of modes. Everybody who knows decent music theory knows that the mode is what sets the mood of the song. What I was thinking would be incredible, is if some music university would sit down and basically go through each type of scale possible one at a time, and mess around with the modes of each one, documenting what is interesting about each mode, and call it the Music Genome Project.

Well, I pretty much started myself, and am gonna mess with it a lot for now on to give my songs their own unique sound. I've come up with 2 really basic examples, which I've called the augmented scale, then the diminished scale. The intervals of an augmented scale would be the following: WWWWWW. This would cause every chord in the scale to be augmented, and there would be a total of 6 notes in this scale. The diminished scale would consist of the following intervals: WHWHWHWH. This would cause every chord in the scale to be diminished, and there would be a total of 8 notes in this scale.

I'm going to start working on this more often when I'm bored in class to see if I can come up with something great with a unique sound. I made this thread so more musicians could discuss it and perhaps become more creative themselves. I apologize for my horrible word choice and sentence fluency, I'm too lazy to properly right this, and I just hope that my ideas get across to you.

[Sidoh]

I apologize for my horrible word choice and sentence fluency, I'm too lazy to properly right this, and I just hope that my ideas get across to you.

It certainly seems that you've tried, but it made little/no sense to me.  However, your preappending warning eliminated all chances of me complaining about it:

Note: If you wish to read this topic and understand, you need to know basic music theory.

About the only thing I know regarding music is:  If it thrashes, it's good.  :D

[Ergot]

Hmm I know a guy who knows a lot of music theory... I'll have him look at this sometime.