Talk:Whole-tone scale

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6-tet[edit]

Can't the whole tone scale also be called 6-tet? 6 notes equal temperament scale? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.187.222.196 (talk) 00:35, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it certainly can! Double sharp (talk) 15:07, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Dreamy[edit]

I added a {{fact}} tag to the end of the paragraph describing the effect of the whole tone scale since I think that subjective claim needs a citation. What else in the article needs verification or citation? Hyacinth (talk) 00:42, 28 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"The AB Guide To Music Theory" - Eric Taylor, ISBN 1-85472-447-9, p. 246 "Since the notes of the whole tone scale are the same distance apart, they all seem to be of equal importance. None automatically stands out as a tonic or dominant." - that any good?

surely there must be many more references in the literature re. the whole tone scale's "rootless" nature. it is not as well known a device as the stack of minor thirds that makes up what is commonly called a "diminished seventh" but the principle is similar - the equidistance of intervals. 82.152.199.48 (talk) 14:11, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rootlessness is not the same as dreamy. (Close, I think.) Hyacinth (talk) 16:47, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

hmm... don't know about the 'dreamy' film music thing though! it's not the sort of language I like to see in music theory articles. but the 'rootlessness' of whole tone scales and their use as such is well documented 82.152.199.48 (talk) 14:19, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What's wrong with "dreamy"? Hyacinth (talk) 16:47, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ah yeah, I wan't sure if you wanted to call attention to the whole paragraph or just that one "dreamy" sentence with the {{fact}} tag. anyway, nice edit. As per your "...depict the ominous", "depict the dreamy" would be better IMO, the composer's intent to "depict" being the key thing. --91.84.108.64 (talk) 12:23, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pythagoras[edit]

I have removed the "Pythagoras" section as it is not talking about the whole tone scale. If you map the intervals in that scale from the text: "The allowing arrangement is most generally accepted for the musical intervals of the planets between the earth and the sphere of the fixed stars: From the sphere of the earth to the sphere of the moon; one tone; from the sphere of the moon to that of Mercury, one half-tone; from Mercury to Venus, one-half; from Venus to the sun, one and one-half tones; from the sun to Mars, one tone; from Mars to Jupiter, one-half tone; from Jupiter to Saturn, one-half tone; from Saturn to the fixed stars, one-half tone. The sum of these intervals equals the six whole tones of the octave."

... you get (starting at C):

C D D# E G A A# B C

By contast the C whole tone scale is:

C D E F# G# A# C

The confusion is the last sentence "the sum of these intervals equals the six whole tones of the octave". It does _not_ mean the scale is a whole tone scale, if means if you add up the half, whole and whole-and-a-half tone intervals, you end up with six tones - an octave. It would be just as true to say "equals the twelve half tones of the octave", but that doesn't mean the scale is chromatic.

Tobus2 (talk) 05:26, 21 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Early use of the whole tone scale[edit]

To my mind it is a little misleading to call Es ist genug a prefiguration of the whole-tone scale when the harmonic context it implies immediately is anything but. Neither would I consider A Musical Joke to be one either, except that all new musical resources started as jokes: soon after the death of Bach and Handel we heard again the age-old complaint that everything beautiful had already been done, and most intriguingly one commentator suggested that nothing original could be done unless we did away with tonality. Oh, little did he know! Anyway it seems to me that the first indication that diatonic forces are no longer the master comes indeed from Schubert, and that is where the history should really start from, but this is one confusion that is in so many sources that it would seem impossible to get rid of. Double sharp (talk) 09:50, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]