Music Theory for Everyone

Some texts define "music" as the horizontal arrangement of DEFINITE PITCHES, otherwise called MELODY, combined with a horizontal stack of two or more DEFINITE PITCHES known as HARMONY. The simplest example of this would be a guitar balladeer or folk singer, where the melody is represented by the singer's voice, and the harmony provided by strummed strings. The “horizontal” vocal line is accompanied by “vertical” guitar chords.

Antithetical to the above definition, a collegiate marching drum ensemble produces neither melody nor harmony. They typically play what is known as "drum cadences", which are rhythmic compositions for the purpose of providing a stride beat for marching. Is this music? Most certainly, even though the pitches that you hear are INDEFINITE. Furthermore, the prior assertion must be qualified in that there is often a tinge of definiticity to drum tones, exemplified by tom toms and conga drums. Additionally, drums with appropriate design factors can be tuned to definite or near definite pitches. The best examples of percussion instruments that produce definite pitches and are not related to the “melodic pecussion” family (xylophone, bells, etc.) are the steel drums (as heard in island musics) and the orchestral tympani (also known as kettledrums).

In organizing the many definite pitches into a workable musical system, humans from various world cultures have experimented with and standardized a plethora of tuning systems. For example, we (i.e., Western civilization) regularly use the "major" and "minor" scales and keys, while Hindu musicians use some five hundred scale tunings in practice and a thousand or so in theory. Our CHROMATIC SCALE is formulated by the equal division of the octave ("C" to the next closest "C", for example) into twelve parts.

Our modern standard of tuning is called "EQUAL TEMPERAMENT". However, only two classes of instruments are capable of producing equal temperament of exact and perfect intonation, namely, electronic keyboards (and related gadgets) and the melodic percussion instruments (xylophones, bells, marimba, vibes, etc.). Perfect "E.T." tuning is attempted by professional piano and organ tuners, but they are doomed to be ever so slightly off due to acoustical factors, variations in the materials that make up the instrument, humidity, and human error. All other musicians must use their musical ears to adhere as closely as possible to the tuning standard "Western civilization” has historically handed down to us. And for instruments such as the trombone, tympani and orchestral strings, the exact placement of every pitch in tune "by ear" alone is especially important.