Hi, I'm Dave from Boyinaband! This is a strangely small keyboard. The notes on it are represented by seven letters of the alphabet from A to G. Amazing! That was pretty amusing. But those are just the whole tones, the white notes, if you include the black notes as well, Then it takes 12 steps to get from A, to G sharp (G#) as twelve semitones Appriaciating that we get the group of notes known as the twelve tones of the western scale and then we can add the original note on to the end. Amalgamating a collection of notes known as a full octave, eight whole notes. If you have ever learned music in the western world, that's probably where you started, but why are there twelve tones in it? Why are they from A to G? Who stopped at G? Why is G the end? That sounds like a 90s rap album. 'Cause a note can be any pitch, it's just a vibration of air at a fixed frequency measured in Hertz [Lip buzz], for instance, 440 Hertz is an A, but there's an infinite number of notes between A and A sharp (A#). Why did we pick that? Let's take a journey back in time. Well, that didn't work. Fine, we'll have to imagine it. Holy crap! We're in 1400 BC! What do we have over there? Oh look, it's Gene Simmons world view! And what's this? It's the first instance of musical notation that humanity has found so far! The first instance of musical notation that humanity has found so far is a cunif- cunif- cunif- rock tablet. It was made in Iraq, which was then called Suma, meaning in terms of music, Sumerian is number one. The song is a hymn to the goddess Nikl; the lyrics say something about giving her an offering in the hopes that she'll return to the people. Meaning that humanity's first recorded musical endeavor, people wanted Nikl-back. In proving how incredible the internet is, this is genuinely the only picture of Nikl that I could find. If I'm honest, if I was writing music praying to this god, it would sound more like... [dorky music] Ey, hey yo Dave, where the relevancy is? The tablet shows that the music was recorded in harmonies of thirds. Harmonies are when you use simultaneous pitches, sometimes sounding really nice and consonant like Octaves, perfect fifths, perfect fourths [auto tuned to respective harmonies, pleasant sounding] But sometimes they can sound really painful, like my personal favorite, minor seconds [auto tuned, unpleasant sound], gorgeous! And those are used a lot to make metal music that sounds a bit like... [heavy metal music] Time for an imaginary time machine again! Oh! What have we found here? Oh! It's Pythagoras! You must be in ancient Greece! Lemme check, yep, they have a functioning economy, it's ancient alright. Pythagoras was supposed to have walking past a blacksmith and heard him hammering away on some anvils and noticed that the pitches were all different and was like... Damn son, that's that real trap! How you do that? And the blacksmith was all like... [wonky voice] Iunno (I don't know) but the hammers are all different sizes! Aye, dis hammer is half the size so it must be an octave lower and this hammer is two-thirds the size so it's a perfect fifth ya know what I'm sayin! Which is a lovely story, however, it's entirely a bunch of crap! Those ratios are correct between for frequencies of notes, however, that only applies to string lengths like on guitars and lyres. Liar, liar, liar, lyre. So it wouldn't've worked with hammers... Also, there is no credible evidence about Pythagoras' existence from the time. He was apperantly born around 570 BC and all the half-way relevant sources are from about 600 years later You'd have to be pretty stupid to put credence in an idea when it's been disproved by science and the only sources are from books hundreds of years later that have been re-translated god knows how many times! God knows. What likely happened is that he or some of the ancient dudes noticed something fricking cool! The frequencies of the more consonant, nice sounding harmonies tend to have ratios that are smaller and tidier. For instance, a string with precisely twice the length of another is an octave to it. Or a string one-and-a-half times as long, so a 2:3 ratio is the perfect fifth. Except they didn't call it an octave or a perfect fifth, they called it something Greek, I don't know... So apparently our brains are wired to detect these insanely specific maths by making it sound pleasant whenever this ratio occurs. Why!? And to figure out the rest of the ratios they could've been like... Ok, since a fifth is 1.5 times the frequency [Talking quietly to self] That means starting at A which is tuned to 440 (hz) we've got E at 660, B 990, and if we got half that's an octave. [mumbling] Woo it's a laser bat, tee hee hee! Oh, sorry. [mumbling] ...finally back round to A! At 446.00... but it was just 440 AHH! Maths is broken! Oh my gaaahd! This disparity is known as the Pythagorean comma. Which meant that on a piano tuned in this way, an A scale might sound really nice, but then an E-flat (Eā) scale would sound horrible. So either you played music that didn't change key ever or you invested in twelve differently tuned pianos and ran between them a lot. Since then, people invented "well temperament" which jiggles around the note frequencies a bit so you only need the one piano and the laws of physics don't get broken. Check out the difference. [C major chord pleasant sounding] [C major chord slightly out of tune] So we use these twelve notes because this way the scale contains a bunch of those really simple ratios the ones that sound nice whilst not being a horrendously large number, so you'd have to have a fricking massive piano. For example, there is this website which allows you to measure the accuracy of your tone recognition. I got 0.75 hz, meaning to make the most of my above average haters-gonna-hate hearing range, I'd have to have 26,640 keys on my fully maximized piano. That that piano would be 366 meters wide (1200 ft), which to give you a reference, is as about as wide as my ego, which is about as wide as the Bank of America building in New York. Frickin' big! But Dave! What about the alphabet? The first recorded person to use the alphabet to represent musical notes was the 6th-century philosopher called Boethius. [applause] He gave the two octave range of notes that we used at the time, the letters A B C D E F G H I K L M N O-, wait a second, no J? What? Oh! J didn't exist until the 16th century. Well, at least it got invented then. Hypen Z (-Z) would a rubbish rapper name. The note names were later changed to repeat from A to G when people started to use other octaves than those two. And, eventually, people added in the flats and sharps in between to represent those semitones. So yeah! Since octaves are a really convent way to group notes, both mathematically and in terms of how they feel, going through the octave alphabetically just leads you to stop at G. And that's why they end at G! But some innate level of understanding consonant music goes back to the frickin' stone age. The oldest possible instrument that we've found is from 43,000 BC. It's a flute. To give you an idea, there were less than a million people on Earth then. I really like the idea of this caveman carving this flute and choosing the notes that sound nice together which no idea of the precise science behind what he was doing. Even back before people understood their harmonic ratios behind it all, people could choose notes to invoke emotion; to make someone happy, to put themselves in the mood to do something for consolation when they're sad, to make themselves appear more attractive, it's so intensely intertwined with who we are. Sometimes it's worth remembering how ridicuoulsy frickin' cool it is that we have an ability like that, the only species that feels music that way, so it's worth utilizing that. Cheers for watching and have a nice day! [video preview playing] [wonky music]
Love the subtle Vi Hart nod.
For those of you who do not yet know of the Laser Bat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4niz8TfY794
Awesome, I always love learning the science/history behind our love for music! Thanks for posting
Thought he was a chick from the thumbnail... and a fat one too.
gotta love that Vi hart reference.