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koganbotMark, or someone, why is the harmonic minor scale called the harmonic minor scale? How is it any more harmonic than the natural minor scale? Wikip:
Wikip explains "harmonic" in the name like this:
Here's a natural (rather than harmonic) minor for the v, which sounds fine to me:
So does this:
[EDIT: For the record, those are Tapper Zukie's original "Simpleton Badness" from Man Ah Warrior and Sistar's "Alone."]
Yes, I'm never likely to master music theory. Other stuff is taking my time.
Another reason for this post is that you — especially you who are named "Mark" — may enjoy the ChoColat track for how its harpsichord and melody recall the classic She'kspere/Kandi days of TLC, Destiny's Child, and Pink. Maybe you, more than I, will be able to explain what the melody has in common with those melodies of yore (if I'm right that it does).
"One More Day" is composed in the key of A harmonic minor, meaning though in A minor, it has a G#, an accidental, at the end of the chorus and the end of the second verse. The vocals span around an octave and a half, from C4 to E5. It is written in verse-chorus form, with a bridge section in a rap-form, featuring Sung Hyo Ram from XCROSS as the guest rapper, before the last repeated chorus.
Wikip explains "harmonic" in the name like this:
The scale is so named because it is a common foundation for harmonies (chords) used in a minor key. For example, in the key of A minor, the V chord (the triad built on the note E) is normally a major triad that includes the raised seventh degree of the scale: G♯, as opposed to the unraised G♮ which would make a minor triad.What confuses me about this explanation is that it assumes that, if your i is a minor, then V is somehow more "harmonic" than v is. (That is, that the major chord that's a fifth above the chord that establishes the key is, when the key is minor, more "harmonic" than the minor chord that's the fifth above the original chord.) Now I get that Wikip is saying that the major V is more "normal" or "common" than the minor v. (Where? Among whom?) Is that because it's — somehow — more harmonically related? Is it because of that "leading-tone" business Wikip mentions?
Here's a natural (rather than harmonic) minor for the v, which sounds fine to me:
So does this:
[EDIT: For the record, those are Tapper Zukie's original "Simpleton Badness" from Man Ah Warrior and Sistar's "Alone."]
Yes, I'm never likely to master music theory. Other stuff is taking my time.
Another reason for this post is that you — especially you who are named "Mark" — may enjoy the ChoColat track for how its harpsichord and melody recall the classic She'kspere/Kandi days of TLC, Destiny's Child, and Pink. Maybe you, more than I, will be able to explain what the melody has in common with those melodies of yore (if I'm right that it does).
Re: "Five to one, baby, one in five: no one else gets out alive..."
Date: 2012-09-30 04:32 am (UTC)Not sure what this is (unless you mean "augmented seventh").
Re: "Five to one, baby, one in five: no one else gets out alive..."
Date: 2012-09-30 08:46 am (UTC)Major second = an interval of two semitones (C --> D)
Augmented second = an interval of three semitones (C -- >D#)
But yes, there's an ambiguity because an augmented 7th -- besides being the name of an interval (the rather unusual but not impossible C --> B#, ie on a piano it exactly resembles the full octave) it's the name of a seventh chord: C-E-G#-Bb
(Note: I'm starting all my examples with C because it's easier for me to get them right without going to my piano...)
(Of course an augmented second is also a chord: a chord with two notes in it...)
In the harmonic minor scale, the augmented second is the jump beween the flatted sixth and the sharped 7th of the scale, the latter being the leading note. It's this jump that makes the scale somewhat unusual, "gypsyish" and so on. Augmented seconds are much more common in folk music, traditional music, pre-classical music, oriental music and so on -- or rather, are made to feel exotic in classical composed music, though actually there's a ton of them, since "exoticism" is quite a common mood for composed music to be reaching for.
Re: "Five to one, baby, one in five: no one else gets out alive..."
Date: 2012-09-30 07:51 pm (UTC)Ah. So it isn't the second note of the scale (re) that's augmented, but the interval between the sixth and sharped seventh in the minor scale that's an augmented second.
Re: "Five to one, baby, one in five: no one else gets out alive..."
Date: 2012-09-30 09:36 pm (UTC)