2788: Musical Scales

2023-06-13T01:08:24Z

Dmitri: /* Explanation */ Count from zero problem. From C4 to C5 is 7 named letter notes (C-D, D-E, E-F, F-G, G-A, A-B, B-C), and 12 semitones (C-C#, C#-D, ..., B-C, there are twelve, trust me.)

{{comic
| number = 2788
| date = June 12, 2023
| title = Musical Scales
| image = musical_scales_2x.png
| imagesize = 326x222px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = In the Hall of the Mountain King was accidentally composed on log/log paper.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SEMI-LOG MOUNTAIN, Editted by an anonymous user who would like to go by the name HALRANDIR, thankyouverymuch, and another user who made edits while HALRANDIR made edits and didn't change this tag - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_notation#Modern_staff_notation standard Western musical notation], the horizontal position of a note indicates its relative temporal position in the piece, and the vertical position of a note denotes  its pitch; but the pitch is really a logarithm of the note's frequency (every octave/seven named notes/12 half steps equals a doubling of frequency), so it's a semi-log plot of sorts. The comic thus explores what a notation would look like if the horizontal axis behaved this way instead. Likewise, the vertical axis has been rendered linearly by frequency, with the normally equally-set lines on a normal musical staff stretching to compensate for the increasing jumps between pitches.

Randall seems to have mistakenly assumed that the lines of a music stave represent a linear increase in pitch and thus an exponential increase in frequency. He has thus mapped them onto a logarithmic scale by doubling the space between each successive line of the stave - one space between the bottom two lines, then two spaces, then four, then eight. In fact, the lines and the spaces between them correspond to notes in the C Major scale, which have unequal gaps between them.

The sheet music pictured is the opening line of "Simple Gifts"; an ordinary copy of the sheet music can be found on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SimpleGifts.png Wikipedia].

The title text purports to explain how {{w|In the Hall of the Mountain King}}, which progressively increases in tempo/speed and intensity from an initially subtle start into a rapid hustle towards a series of crescendos at the end, was written on {{w|Log–log plot|log-log paper}}, that features nonlinear expansion in ''both'' its axes (in order to render various exponential graphs linear, often for the purposes of ease of understanding). Rather than these features being a deliberate composition decision, this says that they're only the result of how it was written down, or thenceforth read.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[The sheet music for "Simple Gifts" on a distorted staff.]
:[Caption below the panel]:
:When transcribing music, remember to put ''frequency'' on a log scale and ''time'' on a linear one, not the other way around.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Music]]

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2788: Musical Scales