Message 6/28
Date: 26-Nov-02 @ 04:40 PM -
RE: The Key of House
The old classical composers did tend to associate different moods to different keys (and by extension also to the chords in different keys, even if dealing with the "fundamental" or "fifth" chords, etc.).
HOWEVER, this practice is meaningful only when using "pure" scales: scales which have supposedly "perfect" golden-rule relationships between the frequencies of the fifth note, the fourth note, and the fundamantal note of the scale. If you use such a perfect scale to tune your piano for C scale, then all other scales will sound "slightly strange" in various ways (depending on the scale). Playing your melody in the other scales will not sound exactly as if you transposed it on the scales we use today.
So what do we use today ?!
We use a sort of "averaged" mapping of notes to frequencies, where the logarithmic difference between all semi-tones is allways 1/12, regardless of which scale you're actually dealing with. Obviously, the same melody transposed, and same chords (primary, fifth, etc.), will just sound "the same", just at slightly higher frequencies, without those "slightly strange" effects.