First of all, it would basically involve rewriting history, figuratively and literally. Technically, it would be possible, but it wouldn’t be at all practical. There are many reasons why this wouldn’t be plausible. Why don’t we simply change every instrument to a non-transposing instrument? Hopefully this hypothetical question sounds completely ridiculous to you. To play in a different key, you would need to play a different flute.īut, now it is possible to pitch every instrument to C. For a long time, flutes were diatonic instruments in many cultures. In terms of the content of this article, chromatcism was not always possible on instruments. As with everything in life, music developed through a gradual evolution. To get a little philosophical, nothing isn’t and then all of the sudden is. Other cultures have different understandings and defining characteristics of music. Music, to us, is defined by intervals at the half step, time signatures in which 4/4 is the most common, the major scale and the minor scales, etc. When we talk about music in our culture, we are referring to Western art music music developed through European art traditions. Music varies greatly from culture to culture. No one sat down and planned out all of the complexities of music how music was going to work. I’m betting your first thought was something along the lines of: “Why does concert pitch exist? Why is it a thing? What’s the point?”Īs mentioned above, the history of music is incredibly complex. In a concert band, if the director asks the same thing, the flutes and trombones do play their C scale, but the clarinets and trumpets play their D scale, the alto saxophones play their A scale, the French horns play their G scale… Not so simple. In an orchestra, if the director asks the string instruments to play a C major scale, everyone (violins, violas, cellos, basses) plays a C major scale. At the same time, eighth graders all around the world have to deal with concert pitch on a regular basis.Ĭoncert pitch refers to the universal standard pitch, A=440hz. Many professional musicians will spend their entire careers never having to deal with concert pitch.
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