Piano and Music Videos

Today we are going to discuss something that a lot of you have probably never heard of and that is quarter tone music. If you have ever heard quarter tone music before you would instantly recognize it as being different than anything typically heard in Western music. To most of us it may sound like music that is being played out of tune. So what exactly is it and how is it different from the music most of us know?

Let’s begin by talking about Western music. For most of us the music we are familiar with is founded upon the principles in Western Music. Everything from Rock to Pop to Symphonies utilizes the same twelve notes (or tones) that are the foundation of nearly all the music you know. But all music is not based on the principles of Western music and there are different cultures around the world that utilize notes beyond the twelve tones we are familiar with.

In our music we base things upon the smallest interval of a half step. For example, if you look at the keyboard of a piano, the smallest distance between any two keys (black and white) is a half step. On other instruments it is the same; the smallest distance between notes is a half step. Quarter tone music adds notes between these notes.

This is a question I received the other day and I was surprised about how in-depth the answer became. All musicians are familiar with time signatures at the beginning of pieces – whether it’s 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, or even something like 12/8 – but why is there no 3 at the bottom of time signatures? The answer to this question comes down to what a time signature means.

The top number in a time signature represents how many beats there are in each measure. In other words, each measure (the box around each set of notes) of music on your sheet has that many beats contained within it – for example, a piece in 3/4 would have 3 beats in each measure of music.

The bottom number in a time signature represents the kind of note getting one beat. For example, a 1 would stand for a whole note. So a time signature with a 1 at the bottom – such as 4/1 – would mean that each whole note gets 1 beat and the top number tells you that there are 4 beats in each measure of music. A 2 at the bottom of the time signature would represent a half note and that means that every half note gets one beat. A 4 on the bottom would represent a quarter note and that would mean that every quarter note would get one beat. This goes on and on with each number representing a different note. But you might have noticed we just skipped 3 and instead went from 2 to 4; why is this?

There is not really a 3 note in music. What about something like triplets? Couldn’t you have a triplet getting one beat? The answer is not a simple yes or no.

Composers are able to make triple divisions as part of a time signature but they aren’t represented by a 3 at the bottom of the time signature. When you see time signatures like 6/8 or 12/8 these are actually functioning differently than you might think. There are certainly 6 beats in a 6/8 time signature and there are 6 8th notes to a measure. The question is, how is this different from 3/4 where you have three quarter notes in a measure? After all, three quarter notes equals the same amount as six eighth notes; it is exactly the same amount of time that’s measured. So how are these different?

When you have something like 6/8 time or 9/8, or even 12/8 time it’s actually a triple division. 6/8 time is actually two groups of three – sometimes referred to as a duple meter. In these triple division time signatures, the bottom number can represents dotted quarter notes. So 6/8 time is like having 2 dotted quarter notes in each measure. 9/8 time can be thought of as a piece with 3 dotted quarter notes in each measure. (Each dotted quarter note contains 3 eighth notes.) So, this is how a triple division of the beat is achieved with time signatures.

So why can’t we just put a three at the bottom of the time signature? Because there is simply nothing we can denote as a three note – every time signature must have a note represented in the bottom number and 3 is not represented by any particular type of note.

These are two terms that have major similarities but they also have distinctly different functions.

Transposition is simply changing the key of a piece of music or section of music to another key.

Modulation is changing keys within a piece of music, often times coming back to the original key. There can be many modulations within a piece of music.

In the video provided with this article you will hear an example of modulation, where I go from C major, modulate to G major, and then back to C major. This is used frequently in pieces of music to add harmonic interest. Since most pieces end in the keys they started in, often times there is more than one modulation within a piece or movement of a larger work. Modulation is a compositional technique which is written into the score; it’s not something you would generally choose to do with a piece of music.

Transposition on the other hand is used to take something and then play it in a different key. For example, if you were to take a series of chords and then play them again just transposed up a half step, a whole step, or anywhere you would like. This is transposition. If you have ever heard a choir warm up, they might sing a group of notes transposing the series of notes up by half-steps to help the group warm up. This is a classic example of transposition.

Another real world example of transposition would be if you were playing piano with a singer. You want the singer to be comfortable singing in a particular range. Sometimes the songs are available transposed into different keys to put the music in a comfortable range for the particular singer. There are even keyboards now that have a transposition functions that make it simple to transpose your playing into different keys at the push of a button!

Modulation on the other hand is a compositional technique that allows a free flow of tone centers within a piece of music.

Solfeggio, sometimes called sight-singing, is the ability to read and sing music at sight. This is an incredibly important skill for all musicians. So how do you develop these skills?

There are a couple of different systems and each one has different values. I’m going to explore these and you can decide what the best course of action is for you.

I grew up with a method called “movable do solfege”. You’ve probably heard it before: “Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do”. “Do” is the tonic, the first note of the major scale, and you simply progress up through the scale degrees. In movable do solfege, no matter what major key you are in, the tonic of that key is always do. For example, if you are in C major, C is “do”. This is important to remember because this is not the case when it comes to “fixed do” solfege.

In “fixed do” solfege C is always “do” (and “re” is d and so on). The notes never change syllables.

While these two methods are completely different, they are both important in their own ways.

The strength of “fixed do” comes from naming notes. No matter what iteration the note takes it will always correlate to the particular syllable in the “fixed do” system. C will always be “do”, D will always be “re” and so on. This can be incredibly useful – especially if you’re a conductor – because you will be able to determine the absolute pitch of each of the notes. Scores are transposed and there are different clefs so being able to determine the absolute pitch is a very powerful tool.

So why would you want to use movable do? Why should you constantly be changing the pitch of “do” and why would you want it in different places? The value is that you can hear music in the context of the key, so you can figure out the notes you are hearing. In other words, if you hear a pattern of notes (for example: do, mi, so ) you can determine that it’s a major triad chord; no matter what the key. This makes it possible to quantify the pitches relative to one another and determine these patterns of notes much easier. This can really help for people who don’t have perfect pitch – it’s a much easier way to know the notes you are hearing.

But what about the relative minor? There are actually two schools of thought for this. The way I was trained is that the key signature determines where “do” is, so the relative minor begins on “la”. This makes perfect sense and is still easy to grasp even if the piece switches between major and minor. This works out the same for all of the modes which share key signatures with major and minor scales but start on different scale degrees (like all the white keys from D-D would be a D dorian mode which shares the key signature of C major which has no sharps or flats).

The last thing we need to address is how to deal with accidentals (sharps, flats, and naturals). These are simply ignored in fixed do solfege but in movable do we add extra syllables to account for these accidentals.

An ascending chromatic scale would be:

Do-Di-Re-Ri-Mi-Fa-Fi-So-Si-La-Li-Ti-Do

Descending chromatic scale is:

Do-Ti-Te-La-Le-So-Se-Fa-Mi-Me-Re-Ra- Do

Movable do solfege is how I grew up with music and it’s how I hear music. I use it for every aspect of music, whether it’s reading music or even performing. All music is essentially playing by ear so even if you read it’s important to have a system in place that allows you to understand what you are hearing.