SOMETHING ABOUT WESTERN MUSIC

Western Music The organised movement of sounds through a continuum of time. The major and minor scales that have dominated western music since 1650 are, strictly speaking, two modes of the basic diatonic scale; the Ionian mode, exemplified by CDEFGAB, which became the major scale; and the Aeolian mode, exemplified by ABCDEFG, which became the minor scale. The modes sound different because the half steps occur at different places in each. By the late 19th century, because of the ever-increasing use of sharpened and flattened notes, western music was based not on diatonic scales, but on a chromatic scale i.e. 12 notes within an octave. Pantatonic (five notes), Heptatonic (six notes) Indonasian music was a pentatonic scale called ‘Slendro’ in which the five notes are spaced almost eqally within the octave. Intervals can be measured in units called cents, 1200 per octave. The typical intervals of western music are multiples of 100 cents (semitones). The human ear can distinguish intervals as small as 14 cents, but no music can be made from such a small interval.