Music Theory
“Scales are almost like choosing colours from a palette; they help to create various distinctive moods, atmospheres and tonal flavours within music..”
Career musician Ruth Montgomery explores the element of Theory through a series of four pattern works.
The chromatic scale system (which is made up of twelve separate notes) is the basis of Western classical music, and derived from this are major and minor scales and key signatures. Scales are almost like choosing colours from a palette; they help to create various distinctive moods, atmospheres and tonal flavours within music.
Generally speaking, a major key has a bright sound that people often describe as cheerful, inspiring, exciting, or fun. A minor key is more likely to sound sad, ominous, or mysterious. In this series, Ruth strips to the basic building blocks of music by looking solely at scale patterns. Although scales are traditionally written out on staves and supported by key signatures, Ruth used hexagon cut-outs to visually show the patterns of four types of common Western scale – major, minor harmonic, minor melodic, and arpeggios (broken chords). Using this technique reveals the mathematic properties of Western scales.
The colours used in this project are taken from the mind of professional musician, Eloise Garland. Although she has hearing loss, Eloise has an involuntary mixture of senses, called ‘chromesthesia’, which causes her to visualise an individual colour for every note in the chromatic scale system. Using Eloise’s colours with my notation patterns revealed a piece of work that was both beautiful and practical.
The Major Scale
Interpreting this piece of work isn’t as hard as you would think – simply start in the bottom left-hand corner on the white hexagon (labelled C) and work your way up diagonally to the dark blue hexagon (D), and up again to yellow (E), and so on. The larger gaps represent the tones (whole steps), whilst the smaller gaps represent the semitones (half steps). This shows that a major scale is made up of tone/tone/semitone/tone/tone/tone/semitone. Therefore, the position of the two semitones (E-F and B-C) can be easily visually identified, enabling us to recognise the type of scale as being ‘major’.
The Minor Harmonic Scale
Again, start from the bottom left-hand corner (red hexagon labelled ‘A’) and work your way up to blue (‘B’), white (‘C’), etc. The harmonic minor scale can be seen to have a pattern of tone/semitone/tone/tone/semitone/tone + semitone/semitone.
The Minor Melodic Scale
Working up once more from the bottom left-hand corner, we can see that the melodic minor scale is made up of tone/semitone/tone/tone/tone/tone/semitone.
Major and Minor Arpeggios (Broken Chords)
Major and minor arpeggios (broken chords) ascending and descending are depicted here. The addition of notation shows how the first (known as the ‘root’), third, fifth, and octave notes of the scale make up an arpeggio. This particular image can be interpreted by starting in the bottom left hand corner, but this time coming back down again to the lower right hand corner after reaching the middle.
