FreeMusic Theory- Overtone Scale

This series of lectures will be on the overtone scale. We hear great music but because we don't always understand the principals of music, some of the "awe" we should have is not understood. Hopefully this series of lectures will inspire all music students, beginning through advanced and give the desire to not only learn music, but to appreciate music.  

WHAT IS A "GREAT WORK OR GREAT COMPOSER"

Lecture 1

     Music consists of melody, harmony and rhythms, this explanation is in its simplest of forms. There is music which has great rhythms, which is used for dancing, there are songs that have beautiful melodies, and songs that are written with outstanding modulations in harmonic structures.  Let's compare musical structure to a house.  The foundation and structure would consists of scales, chords and modulations (simple meaning for modulation is changing scales or keys in a composition). The rooms could be a sonata, because a sonata because it contains different parts.  Furniture and decoration would be a melody and rhythms, completing and fulfilling the structure and rooms.   Are you getting the idea?  Building music is not simple.  Do composers start with a melody then build the foundation, or do composers build a foundation and then add the melody.  Let's assume that most pop music starts with melody and rhythm then builds a simple foundation, but classical and jazz usually build with the foundation first. 
     When studying the overtone series and how it applies to the foundation of music you will begin to have an idea of how a composers mind work.  Yes, the "Great Composers" have a thorough knowledge of music and the fascination is that they can use music "math", building great structures, and at the same time build such beautiful sounds and melodies. 
     The overtone scale series was built from nature and its development to the tempered piano came into existence only in the last 300 years.  We use tempered instruments today, which means that they were tampered with to give us the 12  major scales.  The overtone scale we use today actually comes from the fundamental C string.  There are overtone scales that we can not use with our system of twelve major scales.  This study is so fascinating and with the appearance of computers maybe we will be able to produce tones that can not be included in our instruments of today.  The system of the 12 major scales and triads (chords) is a very organized system.  The other system we have in music is developing music chromatically.  This means that we can move half steps and whole steps without regards to the major scales.  When developing music with both systems one would tend to think that only chaos would be the result.   Mozart was a master of using both methods, and this is part of his genius. Later we will look at his work and show how he used this combination.  Do you think Mozart started with melody or the foundation?
     The next question would be,  who developed the tempered system of 12 major scales and how was this accomplished.  So many questions and that is the purpose of this first lecture.  Even without a musical education you can begin  to understand the complexity of music. Answering some of these questions will be our goal over this series of lectures.  I hope you have enjoyed this simple explanation and that it will set you on the path of learning more about music.                      Author Alana LaGrange.

     
If you have a response or would like to add more information, please  E-mail.

                          Lecture 2   Lecture 3   Lecture 4