User:NorwegianBlue/refdesk/music

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Identifying a Mozart composition
Hi, what is the opus (KV) number of this piece. It is not the sonata known under kv. 570, infact it aint a sonata but instead it seems to be some kind of concerto including a flute and a piano. appreciate some help. -- Funper 22:49, 22 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Please don't post questions more than once. HenryFlower 09:28, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart might give you some help. --Halcatalyst 14:49, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Beautiful music, and definately sounds like WA Mozart. The key is Bb major, if that is of any help. Did some googling for Mozart midi files for flute and piano in the key of Bb, but didn't find it. Could it have been written for another instrument originally (violin?), and transcribed? --NorwegianBlue 23:23, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I played the sound clip at work during lunch today, and one of my colleagues (who plays the clarinet and piano in his spare time) immediately recognised it, and knew that he had played it. He wanted to check out his sheet music at home, and has now sent me an email which reads as follows: "This is a sonata for the violin and piano by W.A. Mozart, K378 (also known as K317d in the Köchel revision 6/1994), the key is Bb major. It was probably arranged for the flute and piano by the great French flutist Marcel Joseph Moyse. The sonata has also been arranged for two clarinets by Wilhelm Sadowsky and Otto Büttner, as the first of six duets for two clarinets." My colleague recognised the music because he had played all six duets. As you probably have seen from the tagging within the .ogg file, it is a live recording by Albert Tipton (flute) and his wife Mary Norris (piano). --NorwegianBlue 19:10, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you. -- Funper 00:13, 27 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Please note: the above file was formerly named "File:Mozart - KV 570.ogg". Graham 87 09:52, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Classical music online
Are there any web sites which offer the opportunity to listen to classical music, either whole pieces (which I doubt) or sample passages? For example, I was reading about Dvořák's Cello Concerto and would like to get an idea of what it sounds like. --Halcatalyst 02:08, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * For the Cello Concerto, try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsS8jvFrLKs: Dvorak: Cello Concerto, Op.104 (Part 1). Miklos Perenyi plays Antonin Dvorák's Cello Concerto, Op.104 with Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana led by Urs Schneider. You'll also see links to Parts 2 and 3. I don't know a "portal" for this, but for a well-known piece a Google search generally leads pretty quickly to results. --Lambiam Talk  06:10, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * www.classiccat.com is the best that I know of, and it's generally free. 66.112.244.146 06:38, 20 June 2007 (UTC)MelancholyDanish

Thank you all. I was able to listen to parts of the piece, though the cadenza to the third movement, which I was especially interested in, cut off unexpectedly. --Halcatalyst 13:18, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * BBC3 has a website and does both full concerts and bits and pieces.Also good programmes about classical music.hotclaws 09:28, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you should look into podcasts, and you could start with NPR's list of classical music shows, at here. Llamabr 15:43, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Hit songs with odd time signtures (Music)
Has there ever been a Billboard 200 #1 hit in a time signature that is not 4/4? A top 10 hit maybe? NIRVANA2764 (talk) 00:30, 12 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Take five? by Dave Brubeck quartet--TreeSmiler (talk) 01:59, 12 December 2007 (UTC)


 * All You Need Is Love hit #1 in both the UK and the US. -- k a i n a w &trade; 05:47, 12 December 2007 (UTC)


 * "El Paso" (January 1960) and "Time in a Bottle" (December 1973) are in 3/4. – I'll bet most of the answers are 6/8; if my aural memory is accurate, they include "To Know Him Is to Love Him" (December 1958); "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" (December 1958); "Runaround Sue" (October 1961); "Blue Velvet" (September 1963); "Chapel of Love" (June 1964); "Baby Love" (October 1964); "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" (May 1965); "Help Me Rhonda" (May 1965); "Penny Lane" (March 1967); "This Guy's in Love with You" (June 1968); "Wedding Bell Blues" (November 1969); "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" (January 1970); "(They Long to Be) Close to You" (July 1970); "A Horse With No Name" (March 1972); "Song Sung Blue" (July 1972); "My Ding-a-Ling" (October 1972); "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (January 1975); "Call Me" (April 1980); "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" (July 1980); "Kiss from a Rose" (August 1995). – What about "The Candy Man" (June 1972), "Alone Again (Naturally)" (July 1972), "Crocodile Rock" (February 1973)? I don't remember them well enough to be sure. —Tamfang (talk) 07:21, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Several of the songs listed by Tamfang have a 4/4 feel to my ear, even though the formal time signature might be 2/4 (Alla breve), which is really only a technicality. These include Penny Lane, Raindrops keep fallin' on my head, Close to you, and definitely Crocodile Rock. --NorwegianBluetalk 19:30, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Uh, 2/4 with lots of triplets, maybe ... Tamfang (talk) 21:48, 14 December 2007 (UTC)


 * That's not fair since 3/4 is hardly an odd time signature for pop music :) I think the questioner must mean "4/4 or 3/4". The usual answer is Money (Pink Floyd song), which unfortunately only hit #13 in the US. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:20, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 3/4 and 6/8 are not rare enough to be startling, but the great majority of #1s are in 4/4 (growing more so over time it seems), hence the question. —Tamfang (talk) 16:52, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Shoulda mentioned I made that list by looking through List of number-one hits (United States). And that I've been out of touch with current music since about 1983, so there are likely some that I didn't spot.  —Tamfang (talk) 16:58, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I've found a sortable list, searchable by time signature, here. Unfortunately you'd have to go through and pick out likely candidates for high chart placings, as it doesn't have any chart position references on it. Hassocks5489 (talk) 13:18, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Right, I've got a bit of my lunch hour left, so here goes ... Money, as above, is in 7/4, as is Solsbury Hill (great song, but not sure whether it was a US hit - I only know the UK charts). Radiohead have a few in 5/4 time.  Huey Lewis & The News did some in 12/8.  Thank U (Alanis Morissette) is in 6/8, as are We Are the Champions, Everybody Hurts, I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues, To Know Him Is To Love Him (or its original Teddy Bears version, To Know Her Is To Love Her), and When a Man Loves a Woman.  Just picked out some of the "big name" 6/8 songs there.  The song I would have said straightaway without looking anywhere is Daysleeper by REM, which is in 3/4.  Really interesting question, by the way: has given me ideas for a quiz I'm setting at work next week!  Hassocks5489 (talk) 13:30, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Are 'Friends' Electric? by Tubeway Army certainly sounds like it could be in an unusual time signature, but I am no musician and have no way of knowing. It was No.1 for five weeks as well.  --Richardrj talkemail 13:41, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The sample in the article is definitely 4. —Tamfang (talk) 16:56, 12 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Check out List of musical works in unusual time signatures. It doesn't provide Billboard numbers, but I didn't see any that I know to be Top 10. --M @ r ē ino 19:15, 12 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Tool use a lot of odd time signatures. I think they've had number ones in the rock charts, and definitely on the album charts, but not the overall singles chart. (I'm in the UK so I don't know for certain off the top of my head) MorganaFiolett (talk) 16:11, 13 December 2007 (UTC)


 * FWIW, I actually did a radio show that consisted of songs that were not in 4/4 or 3/4 - possibly the biggest charting hit that I know of in that hasn't been mentioned above is Jethro Tull's Living In The Past, in 5/4. There are tons in 3/4 or 6/8 ("To know him is to love him", "Moon River", "House of the Rising Sun", "I got you babe", "Where do you go to my lovely"...etc, etc, etc), but songs in more unusual signatures are understandably rarer. Grutness...wha?  23:04, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Okaaay - I've looked through the list of songs I had for my show - none of them reached no 1 in the US, but one or two of them may have charted moderately high. The list of possible charters includes: Up the hill backwards (David Bowie, 4/4 and 7/8); Solsbury hill (Peter Gabriel, 7/8); Love is only sleeping (The Monkees, 4/4 and 7/8); Light flight (Pentangle, alternating 5/4 and 7/8, bridge in 3/4); The man who sailed around his soul (XTC, 7/8); Money (Pink Floyd, 7/8); Last exit (Pearl Jam, 5/4); Three of a perfect pair (King Crimson, 3/4 and 7/8); Original "Mission Impossible" theme (Lalo Schiffrin, 5/4); Throwing back the apple (Pale Saints, 4/4 and 5/4); Cattle and cane (Go-Betweens, 11/8); Trampled Rose (Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, 4/4 and 5/4); What a bringdown (Cream, 5/4 and 3/4); Something (The Beatles, mostly 4/4, but bridge section in 14/8, 4/4 and 2/4); All you need is love (The Beatles, 7/4 and 4/4). BTW, most of Tamfang's list is definitely 4/4, as is "Are friends electric". As for 3/4, I'm mebarrassed that I missed one of my all-time favourites off that earlier list - "Norwegian wood". And another for the list of actual Billboard no. 1s, "We can work it out" - bridge in 3/4. Grutness...wha?  09:08, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

How many different song variations are there?
It's probably an astronomical number, but the question came to me as I was reading about how one star supposedly was "inspired by" another star to write a similar song and successfully was sued. (It was the one with My Sweet Lord by George Harrison, and He's So Fine)

My question - which is why it's in the math section - is how many possible variations are there on a song? If 10,000 performers/bands each wrote, say, 100 songs a year, thus making a million songs a year, how long before they ran out of variations that were suitably different from each other, so no one performer could say, "Well, that sounds almost exactly like my song." Note that I'm not saying "the exacty same" - obviously, there are subtle differences in songs, but yet "My Sweet Lord" and "He's So Fine" were seen by a court to be similar enough.

I'm just amazed at how people on Name That Tune can guess a song after one note, or even seven; I'm part deaf, but even so, I'm amazed anormal hearing person can tell the difference between songs that seem to start so similarly.Somebody or his brother (talk) 00:22, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * There are enormous numbers of possibilities, the vast majority of which, however, will sound absolutely terrible. Calculating the total number of songs that anyone is likely to enjoy listening too is probably extremely difficult due to problems defining what people like. --Tango (talk) 00:59, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Quite true. If the OP wants an idea of the magnitude, let's assume that there are 88 notes (the number of keys on a piano), that only a single note is played at any given time, that every note is held for the same amount of time, that there are no rests, and that the song is exactly 100 notes long. Given these restrictions, more "songs" can be composed than there are atoms in the known universe. Wikiant (talk) 01:36, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * There are more "songs" than the number of atoms in the observable universe squared. --Tango (talk) 01:47, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Awww, but what fraction of those songs seems similar? Let's be more concrete.  Lets songs be defined by sequences of notes (ai) and (bi), and define two songs as "similar" if there exists p,q,r such that (ap,...,ap+9) = (bq + r,...,bq+9 + r).  In other words, they are similar if the same pattern of 10 notes occur in both songs modulo a change in pitch.  Now for each real song there would be quite large space of disallowed similar songs.  I'll leave estimating that number to someone with more free time ;-).  Dragons flight (talk) 01:59, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * My extremely rough estimation (so rough I daren't share the details!) puts it somewhere in the trillions, at least. --Tango (talk) 02:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Assume that a song can be recorded on a CD containing N bits. The total number of possible songs cannot exceed 2N. A lower bound is obtained by using the observation that skilled people can identify a song after hearing M≈7 notes. Let A≈24 be the number of different pitches and B≈5 the number of different durations of a single note. Then the number of different songs are ≤(AB)M≈1207=358318080000000. Bo Jacoby (talk) 07:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC).
 * I believe that part of what makes a song easily recognizable after just a few notes is its general "sound" (instrumentation, accompanying chords, tempo, echoes or lack of them and so on). So even songs that are "formally" very similar (say, sharing a subsequence of notes in their main melody) can be easily told apart. (On the other hand, they are not different in the sense of the OP.) If we could strip a song of all these factors, probably more notes would be necessary to recognize them. Goochelaar (talk) 11:28, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You might want to reduce the number of songs by taking conventions of western music into account. Much of western music is in four-four time and the range of notes maybe span two/three octaves, further if we restrict to songs in a major key, the notes will tend to comprise the root note, the 3rd and the 5th, which sound more harmonious. (This is due to fact that 24/12≈5/4, 27/12≈3/2 see Just intonation). So if we ignore all the fancy jazz stuff and stick to major keys in four four time we will get a much reduced but still large number. I've read somewhere that there is actually quite a small number of common baselines or grooves which tend to be more repetative.
 * Maybe the correct mathematical way to workout the chance of two songs sounding the same would be more a bassian approach. Sample songs in a given genera, rescale so they are all in the same key, find frequency of each note and do the sums. --Salix alba (talk) 11:30, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * All you need now is a way to extrapolate the tune from the first seven notes taking into account these various rules and put the lot on the web so when a person asks for tune number 52933031492 your web server returns the tune with an appropriate copyright. Having filtered out all the current tunes of course. You're gong to make a fortune using the RIAA. Dmcq (talk) 20:03, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * For an estimate of how many different themes there are in real music, see Dictionary of musical themes. The book has 655 pages, and lists themes from classical music, transposed to the key of C. I don't know how many themes there are per page, but can hardly imagine there being room for more than 15 (it's written in music notation). This would imply that the book contains about 10,000 entries. The book has a companion volume with themes from opera and songs (lieder?), which has about 8000 entries. So I would guess that the number of reasonably well known themes in classical music is probably smaller than 50,000. --NorwegianBluetalk 20:08, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Consider coding melodies this way: 1) Decide how many notes distinguish melodies, say $$N$$. 2)Give each note one of these 3 values: +, -, or =. The value says whether the note is above, below or equal to the preceding note. There will be 3$N$-1 possible codes since the first note is not coded. Example: Happy Birthday song is =+-+-. This code, which could also be expressed as a number by giving the notes arbitrary numerical weights, is not unique to this song but can serve as a hash for compactly cataloging the vast number of possible melodies.Cuddlyable3 (talk) 09:53, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Mp3 tag editing
I have many, many songs on my laptop. I now have 3 issues.

When I first uploaded them, I used the following file structure: Because I now also use an MP3 player, I would prefer the following file structure: I have already done this for my 'The Beatles' folder and my 'John Lennon' folder, but wondered if there is a quick and easy way to do it to all of them.
 * Artist
 * Album
 * Disc no (for double albums)
 * Song name
 * Artist
 * Album
 * Disc no (for double albums)
 * Artist - Song name

Secondly, I would like to edit the little pieces of info (what's it called - metadata or something?) like the song title, artist name, etc. Is there a quick way to do that?

Finally, some of my songs - seemingly at random - appear as 'Track 6' or something in Windows Media Player, despite the filename being different to that. Is there a way to fix that? Den dodge  Talk Contribs 21:46, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Uploaded? To what? Is this itunes, cd rips? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 21:53, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It's just MP3 versions of music from CDs, which I imported using Roxio. Den dodge  Talk Contribs 22:31, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * ok, cause in itunes there should be an option to do what you want easily. For the "Track 6" problem you can use audacity to add a title to each track that will show in WMP. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 22:36, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Audacity isn't needed at all. On Windows (and probably other OS's) all you need to do it right click → Properties → Summary → Advanced. And you can just click to edit right there. flaminglawyerc 22:46, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm on Vista, and that doesn't seem to work. There's an 'ID tag' tab, which I guess is similar, but apparently I need a PowerPack to edit it. Plus it sounds like a long way - isn't there a way to automatically fill it in using the filename? Den dodge  Talk Contribs 23:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * (outdent) For the metadata editing problem, there is an "Advanced Tag Editor" (on XP) option that allowed me to edit every single tag associated with the file - not just artist and title but composer, genre, album, track no., even beats per minute. You can get there by right-clicking on a track in the WMP library and clicking Advanced Tag Editor. As for the filling-in of the data automatically, you will probably have to do that manually. You could always search download.com, etc. but it seems unlikely that such a program exists. Xenon54 (Frohe Feiertage!) 23:23, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Try EasyTAG. It can fill in file metadata from filenames and rename files from their metadata. --wj32 t/c 01:44, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * foobar2000, whilst also being my absolute preferred audio player, has this feature as standard, and everything is done as simple tags (such as %album% %artist% %tracknumber%). &mdash; neuro(talk) 02:28, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Anne Vada - Grenseløs
I'm searching Norwegian singer Anne Vada's discography to name a song. I found track listings of her albums on the web except an album titled "Grenseløs" or "No Boundaries". -- JSH-alive talk • cont • mail 11:33, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The best google hit I can come up with is this one, which states that "Grenseløs" is Anne Vada's concert album, and lists three of the songs only. Two of these are among the most popular Norwegian songs written in the last few decades:
 * Sommernatt ved fjorden (Summer night by the fjord).
 * - A beautiful song written by Ketil Bjørnstad, about the romance between Hans Jæger and Oda Krohg of the Christiania boheme (what? redlink, gotta fix that, well, here are the Spanish and Norwegian versions) . The song was originally released in 1978 on the Album no:Leve Patagonia. Here is a YouTube version sung by a 12-year old girl.
 * Vårsøg
 * -Music by no:Henning Sommerro to a poem by no:Hans Hyldbakk, written in the spring of 1945 while Norway was still under German occupation. The song is a tribute to spring, where "spring" is a metaphor for liberation. According to this source, Anne Vada's version was a South-Korean hit in 2002.
 * The third song listed is All I ask of you by Andrew Lloyd Webber. --NorwegianBluetalk 22:46, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I believe it's not complete listing. I feel there's more...--JSH-alive talk • cont • mail 11:18, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Of course. As I said, what I was able to find on the web, was three of the songs only. Clearly, there are more. I also tried the web site of a major Norwegian online record shop, but the album wasn't in their catalogue. --NorwegianBluetalk 12:14, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Identify music in a Monty Python sketch
Hi, can anyone help me identify the music at 2:00 minutes? Thanks! ╟─ Treasury Tag ► inspectorate ─╢ 19:44, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Roving Report 2, by Jack Trombey (on whom we don't have an article). See  and .  Note that this information is in the comments on the YouTube video posted by the OP. :) Tevildo (talk) 20:44, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * PS - thanks for indirectly helping with _my_ question above. Tevildo (talk) 20:46, 23 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Trombey was a regular composer of stock music for De Wolfe Music (their search engine lists 499 tracks he wrote for them). You can usually tell stock music by its name - they usually have obvious, search-friendly names like "morning dew" or "approaching menace". -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 21:39, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Surely you don't mean Approaching Menace by Neil Richardson? Alansplodge (talk) 21:46, 23 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I do indeed. A surprising amount of familiar stuff like this is stock music (aka production music). Before its use on Mastermind I imagine "Approaching Menace" featured in any number of attack-of-the-rubber-alien films and industrial training videos about the hazards of slippy floors. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 21:50, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Watchers of B-movies and the like start to recognize things. Adventures of Superman fans may recognize the underscores of these clips from Plan 9 from Outer Space as also being in some of the Superman episodes... from about 2:00 to 3:00 of this clip and from about 2:00 to 2:30 and 8:00 to 9:30 of this clip. Plan 9 is as sappy as a movie can be, but there's no question that the stock music "works" for it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:50, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Beatles Song
I listened to this thinking this was the original version, until I got the real version (shorter by almost a minute) and realised this has been covered by someone else. Can anyone tell me who the singer is? Here's the url: http://media.bellsmedia.com/devaprem/trackz/mp3/Miscellaneous/youve_got_to_hide_your_love_away.mp3

Thanks in advance. 223.190.199.235 (talk) 12:45, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Bam! Please see the WikiPedia entry for this song. TheGrimme (talk) 16:24, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yup, done that, so how does that help? Richard Avery (talk) 19:20, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I've already read that article. Knowing the names of people who cover versions of this song won't help me to identify who did this cover, will it? I don't know enought to tell from the person's voice alone, but I was hoping someone from the desk will have heard this version somewhere. 27.57.204.36 (talk) 19:57, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Not that it's of any help (but it might spare others the hassle), I used Shazam for about four different segments, and got nothing. Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:14, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Nope, I don't recognize it either; but it's a very pleasant rendering of the song.Chief41074 (talk) 03:19, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The version that matches in length is that by Waking Hours (on "Ultimate Love Songs" in 2010, not mentioned in the article), but I haven't downloaded it to compare.   D b f i r s   08:14, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The file is in a subdirectory called "devaprem". When googling "devaprem", I get the suggestion "did you mean Deva Premal. If you take a look at the other contents at the site under the "devaprem" subdirectory, you will find this video, which clearly shows Deva Premal and Andy Desmond aka Miten playing (the video matches the photographs in our articles). Listening to other songs at the site, such as the Here Comes the Sun cover, where both Deva Premal and Miten sing, and comparing with other clips on youtube, convinces me that the singer is indeed Andy Desmond aka Miten. --NorwegianBluetalk 11:34, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Confirmed: The Facebook discography of Deva Premal and Miten, says that albums can be purchased at "http://www.bellsmedia.com/shop", which matches the url provided by the OP. Checking out the site, following the link "Download MP3s", leads to "downloads.prabhumusic.net", where there is a "Beatles tribute" by "Deva Premal and Miten, following the link from there leads to, which features a short clip of the song linked to by the OP. --NorwegianBluetalk 11:49, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

*_* Wow. I learnt a thing or two about investigating! Thanks so much guys. Now, where is that resolved label? =) 27.57.204.102 (talk) 06:04, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Musical scales
Why are pentatonic and heptatonic scales so much more common worldwide than other scales (e.g. hexatonic)? --108.206.7.65 (talk) 03:43, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Are they? The scale database in Scala (program),, lists 192 five note scales, 608 seven note scales, and well over a 1,000 twelve note scales (the database includes scales using any tuning, not just equal temperament, obviously, or there would only be one twelve note scale). If you meant why are five note scales used more often than others, again--are they? I would guess seven note scales are more frequently used. Pfly (talk) 10:23, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
 * For the standard pentatonic, I believe the reason most often given for its popularity is that it makes music easy, in the sense that there is no combination of those five notes that has major dissonance. You can experiment on a piano:  you can mess around on the black keys (which form a pentatonic scale) however you like, and nothing you do will sound really terrible.  For heptatonic the story is probably more complicated. Looie496 (talk) 15:36, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Oops, for some reason I was thinking hepta- also mean "five". Looie is right about the standard pentatonic scale being basically dissonance free. As a kid I first played around with improvising on the piano by fiddling with pentatonic scales. The seven note scale thing is definitely more complicated. There's a little history as Diatonic scale. I think in Western music you can trace scale pattern logic back to ancient Greece at least—two tetrachords with the lowest and highest notes being octaves of each other results in a seven note scale. There are other historical factors though. Pfly (talk) 20:47, 31 July 2012 (UTC)


 * C played with D is a dissonance. C played with B is a dissonance.  That's 2 out of 7, or 24%.  Not quite what I'd call "no major dissonances" or "dissonance free".  Dissonances have been given a bad rap, but no composer would ever do without them.  They're the salt and spice for what would otherwise be a bland dish of musical creamed chicken pulp with white sauce.  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  23:00, 31 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I think both Looie and I were saying the "standard" or "major" 5-note pentatonic scale is basically dissonance free / has no major dissonances. Starting on C the standard pentatonic scale is C D E G A. The "worst" dissonance is the major second, which C and D is an example of. Whether a major second is dissonant or not is a subjective question, of course. It's certainly less dissonant than a minor second or a tritone. I don't find major seconds very dissonant, so I said "basically dissonance free". I suspect Looie said "no major dissonances" for similar reasons. But I definitely agree that "major" dissonance is extremely important in music (obligatory link to Consonance and dissonance). Perhaps both of us were wrong to assume "pentatonic scale" implied "major pentatonic". After all, the term "pentatonic scale" just means "five note scale", there are many pentatonic scales other than the standard/major one, some of which are quite dissonant. I noticed the OP has edited pages like Hirajōshi scale, which is about a pentatonic scale with "major dissonances"--and it is apparently in equal temperament. In other tunings pentatonic scales can be exceedingly dissonant. In short, all this is why I asked whether it is actually true that pentatonic scales are more common (they aren't according to the Scala database). I'd also question the claim that the standard/major pentatonic scale, or any/all equal tempered pentatonic scales are more commonly used than other scales. I'd be less skeptical of the claim that 7-note scales are the most common / most used, although I'm not sure how one would determine such a thing in the first place. Finally, I'd point to our pentatonic scale page, but it needs work, especially the lead and with regard to this topic--the lead makes that claim about lacking "the most dissonant intervals", but with a big "citation needed". The heptatonic scale page isn't too useful on this topic either. Pfly (talk) 02:01, 1 August 2012 (UTC)


 * PS, I don't have Scala installed—and it's hard to install on a Mac—but looked through the scale files to find two examples of dissonant, non-equal tempered pentatonic scales, for what it's worth—the "dimtetb" scale ("pentatonic form on the 9/7") and the "chin_pipa" scale ("Observed tuning from Chinese balloon lute p'i-p'a"). The five pitches of the "dimtetb" scale are (in frequency ratio notation): 9:8 major second, 9:7 septimal major third, 14:9 subminor sixth, 7:4 harmonic seventh, and 2:1 octave. The "chin_pipa" notes (in cents): 145 neutral second, 351 neutral third, 647 (no name for this pitch, its about a quarter tone below a perfect fifth), 874 (no name, vaguely near a "Pythagorean diminished seventh), and 1195 (a slightly flat octave). Those two pentatonic scales are quite dissonant! Anyway, anyone interested in the inner workings of scales might want to take a look at Scala. Pfly (talk) 02:46, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

"Help:Score" for musica
Editors can use "Help:Score" for musical notation.—Wavelength (talk) 16:32, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Trying to identify a song => Getting sentimental over you
I'm trying to remember a song. I don't remember the words, and not much of the melody either. It's in a major key, and begings with a rising major 7 triad, starting on the 7th. If the key is F major, it would begin something like this:

( slur ) +--_______---v---+--- |             |  |  |   /  /  /     | -b--+v-|--|--|---|--|--|--/--+--- 12  |     _______  |  |  /   |  |  |  |  | -(g clef)---+-|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--+--- 8  |     |  |  |  |  /         ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  | +-|--|--|--|-+---                |     |  /  /  /                     | +-/--( slur )+---

The slurs indicate that the two second notes (F's) in the first triad and the first F in the second triad are one sustained note, and that the E quarter note and the two first E's in the last triad are one sustained note. The v's indicate that the same notes are accented. The style is soft jazz, songs like "Smoke gets in your eyes" and "As time goes by" come to mind. The high note might be a G (i.e. 9th), but I think it's an E. Not much to go by, my presentation may not be quite correct, and I might even be mixing two songs. Ideas, anyone? --NorwegianBluetalk 19:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)


 * The rhythm isn't quite there but it seems to be "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You". Here's Ella Fitzgerald doing it like no one else ever could.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  21:50, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It's the closest I can come with also. --jpgordon:==( o ) 23:53, 8 April 2013 (UTC)


 * This would be a suitable question for our good friend Musipedia.--Shantavira|feed me 07:25, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot! "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" it is. I did try the Flash piano of Musipedia, but I guess the fragment I was reasonably sure about was either too short or too imprecisely rendered. It had no problem recognizing "As time goes by". --NorwegianBluetalk 08:00, 9 April 2013 (UTC)