Talk:Octatonic scale

Diminished scale

It is vital that this article point out immediately that the term octatonic scale is very often used to refer to the diminished scale specifically. TheScotch (talk) 01:36, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

The move is fine with me, but shouldn't there be something at diminished scale, at least a redirect here? --Delirium (talk) 02:46, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean there should be a link there to here? If there isn't one already, I'll put one in momentarily. TheScotch (talk) 06:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I see. I clicked on this comment and assumed it belonged to the old "Octatonic scale" article. Hyacinth has apparently effectively wiped out the old "Octatonic scale" article and changed the name of the old "Diminished scale" article without having discussed it first (a fortiori achieving consensus), and in the process he's also wiped out the "Diminished scale" article's discussion page. Yes, at the very least there should a redirect. I'm going to begin by attempting to restore the discussion page, however.TheScotch (talk) 08:59, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Now I've recreated a "Diminished scale" article solely for the purpose of redirection. TheScotch (talk) 07:12, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I think all of the above was bad editing. I'm sorry I wasn't here in 2007 to object. An octatonic scale is any scale with eight members. If anybody misuses the term to name a single scale exclusive of the others, they are wrong (and I notice no specimen is cited). If they use the term to describe a single scale non-exclusively, that's OK. For example, I can call my car a Ford, but that doesn't make all Fords my car. The eight-member diminished scales are a subset of the octatonic scales, and they need their own article, although an article on diminished scales should also talk about diminished scales with other than eight members. The eight-member symmetrical diminished scales are a subset of the eight-member diminished scales, and they are notably important in jazz and some orchestral music, so they need their own article too, separate from the diminished scales article, and separate from the octatonic scales article. This article currently looks like what the article on eight-member symmetrical diminished scales should look like. It doesn't look like an article on octatonic scales. It doesn't even mention the so-called "bebop" scale family subset, which includes many tens of other eight-member jazz scales that are neither symmetrical nor diminished. 76.94.246.25 (talk) 18:33, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Octotonic

My remark below concerning the term octotonic, in contradistinction to octatonic, seems a non-sequitur because something is missing from the original discussion. I don't know where it went, and I can't seem to restore it. TheScotch (talk) 08:20, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Names

I was hearing about this scale on radio 3 today -- but they called it the Octatonic scale. -- Tarquin 19:30 Jan 29, 2003 (UTC)

That's what I call it too, because "diminished scale" might be confused with the notes of the diminished seventh chord - I'll make octatonic a redirect. Incidentally, this scale is the same as Olivier Messian's second mode of limited transposition (something else I keep meaning to write about....) --Camembert

Yeah, interesting, I've studied this stuff for years and I've never heard it called anything but the octatonic scale. Antandrus 03:30, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to know how octotonic can be justified eytmologically. The term diminished scale, by the way, intentionally refers to the diminished seventh chord. The diminished scale is (or can be productively conceived as) a combination of two interlocking diminished seventh chords, just as the augmented scale is a combination of two interlocking augmented triads. That's rather the point of these terms. TheScotch 11:00, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

You may notice that may explanation above is somewhat at odds with the explanation the article proffers at present:

"The name diminished comes from the fact that the first, third, fifth, and seventh notes of a diminished scale for a key form the diminished chord for that key."

As for as that goes, my only complaint is that the article is incomplete in this respect. I'm more troubled by the phrase "of a diminished scale for a key form the diminished chord for that key" found within this passage. In the first place, I have no idea what the "diminished scale for a key means", and for that matter, I tend to think the diminished scale's symmetry makes it inherently atonal. In the second place, the term "diminished chord" all by itself implies a triad, yet we just referenced the seventh. In the third place, I'm not quite sure what the phrase "the diminished [seventh] chord for that key" is supposed to mean either. The diminished seventh chord is native only to minor, as a leading tone chord. TheScotch 09:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

The octatonic scale is so-called because it has eight notes (or rather nine notes and eight steps). This article really should be retitled Octatonic Scale. Christopher Melen 21:28, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The scale you have in mind has eight notes per octave, not "nine" (whether it has seven or eight steps depends whether one steps to the octave or not), and as such is one of forty-three non-enharmonically equivalent octatonic scales, as has already been arithmetically demonstrated below. TheScotch 02:15, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but I don't just 'have it in mind', I use it very frequently in my own music. A scale/mode is merely a convenient musical abstraction utilised by composers, not the preserve of those who, unfortunately, seek to view all musical phenomena through set-theoretic glasses, reducing music to a mere calculus of (largely inaudible) symmetries and equivalence relationships, and viewing composition as something like 'analysis in reverse'. Christopher Melen 04:27, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

If a scale is too "abstract" an idea for you, I suggest you simply skip wikipedia articles devoted to scales. TheScotch 19:37, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Harmonic implications

I've just added a new section - hopefully it's of some use to people. However, I'm not sure if it's particularly clear as I lack the language and terminology to explain my knowledge on the subject properly so apologies for that.--Giggidy 00:15, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Béla Bartók

Where should the paragraph on Béla Bartók's use of the octatonic scale go? Here (as with Riff) or at his article?

• In his Bagatelles, Improvisations, Fourth Quartet, Cantata Profana, and Improvisations the octatonic is used with the diatonic, whole tone, and other "abstract pitch formations" (Antokoletz 1984) all "entwined...in a very complex mixture. Bartók does use the octatonic collection exclusively in his "Diminished Fifth" (no.101, vol. 4, Mikrokosmos) and "Harvest Song" (no.33 of the Forty-Four Duos for two violins) and "in each piece, changes of motive and phrase correspond to changes from one of the three octatonic scales to another, and one can easily select a single central and referential form of 8-28 in the context of each complete piece." However, even his larger pieces also feature "sections that are intelligable as 'octatonic music'" (Wilson 1992, p.26-27)

Hyacinth 14:38, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

This seems to me to imply that its list of instances is exhaustive, yet the middle section of Bartok's "Free Variations" from volume six of Mikrokosmos, for example, also confines itself exclusively to the diminished scale. I think it would be better simply to note that Bartok used the scale extensively. One or two examples should suffice.

A character in Milan Kundera's The Joke maintains that Bartok derived the scale from Bohemian folk music practice. Of course I'm not suggesting that we use The Joke as a reference here (it's a work of fiction after all), but Milan Kundera is a musically trained former composer and the son of a famous musicologist, and Bartok is famous for his ethnomusicological researches. Probably Kundera knows whereof he speaks, and if someone could track down Kundera's source or sources, we could profitably put this information in the article. TheScotch 10:03, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Accidentals

The accidental figures added appear as question marks (?) from my computer. Hyacinth 16:54, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

That's probably because you don't have a font that includes them. Do they appear in Character Map? —Keenan Pepper 17:30, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Comment mistakenly added to article

This article concerns the symmetric octatonic scale, which is the only octatonic scale lacking 3-halftone clusters. However, many other octatonic scales can be designed. For instance, jazz bass players will sometimes insert an extra tone into a seven-tone scale so that in walking up the scale can land on the root at the start of each measure. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 35.11.210.175 (talk • contribs) .

There are, in fact, forty-three enharmonically equivalent (and non-transpositionally equivalent) eight-note scales. (You can verify this figure easily in your head without resorting to outside sources or a calculator or paper and pencil if you simply bear in mind that four is the complement of eight in respect to twelve, that the diminished seventh chord has three positions, that the French augmented sixth chord and [0,1,6,7] have six positions each, and that all the rest have twelve: [ (9 X 5 X 11 - 15) / 12] + 3 = 43.)

Note that the wikipedia "pentatonic scale" article does not concern itself solely with C D E G A, the scale conventionally known as the pentatonic scale, but discusses various other five-note scales as well--and in considerably more depth than this article at present discusses other eight-note scales. TheScotch 11:29, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me clear from the way the opening section currently reads that the article was originally titled “Diminished scale”, and I think that’s what it should still be titled. Once we’ve returned to this original title we can write a separate “octatonic scale” article that can talk about various eight-note scales. Both articles will of course acknowledge that classical theory (in contradistinction to jazz theory) tends to refer to the diminished scale as the octatonic scale. TheScotch 09:45, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. What most people understand by the octatonic scale is the scale of alternating tones and semitones. And that's how it's defined in standard music encyclopaedias/dictionaries (such as Grove). Christopher Melen 21:28, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

We've already acknowledged that the most famous octatonic scale is the diminished scale (just as, as pointed out above, the most famous pentatonic scale is the anhemitonic pentatonic scale)--no one disputes this--, but octatonic necessarily means eight-note (just as pentatonic necessarily means five-note), and there's no getting around that. The term diminished scale is at least as widely known as the term octatonic scale, and it has the decided advantage of being unambiguous. You should note as well that the article as it stood before you altered it made a particular point of acknowledging and explaining the alternative term octatonic scale: it wasn't taking sides. Right now there is not a separate "octatonic scale" article; "octatonic scale" redirects to here. If one is made, it will need to talk about the particular octatonic scale (also) known as the diminished scale immediately and furnish a link to this article. TheScotch 02:09, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

There are a number of comments on this page by people who admit to never having even encountered the term 'diminished scale' prior to this article. 'Octatonic' just means 'eight-note' if you want to be pedantic, yes, but the only eight-note scale that most reasonably musically educated people would likely have heard of (or even be interested in) is the scale of alternating tones and semitones. I believe that the name 'octatonic' should be reserved for this scale alone, simply because of its pre-eminence - it was the first eight-note scale used widely by composers, and is still the most frequently encountered. Furthermore, the reason for its pre-eminence, and the only reason composers are really interested in it, is because of its characteristic colour - reducing it to a mere subset of the set of all eight-note scales is surely to miss this vital point. Christopher Melen 05:46, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: "There are a number of comments on this page by people who admit to never having even encountered the term 'diminished scale' prior to this article.":

Yes, and as far as I can make out, that number is either one (that is, if we infer from Antandrus's early remark that he means to "admit" he hadn't) or zero (if we don't make this inference).

Re: "the only eight-note scale that most reasonably musically educated people would likely have heard of (or even be interested in) is the scale of alternating tones and semitones.":

If we translate "most reasonably musically educated people" to mean you, this may be true, but I should think--at the very least--most properly musically educated persons ought to have heard of and be interested in the two octatonic scales David Baker calls the "bebop" scales and the octatonic scale that Holst uses in the "Mercury, the Winged Messenger" movement of his 1914 The Planets (also used in Messiaen's very famous piece Quartet for the End of Time).

I've pointed out repeatedly that although the anhemitonic pentatonic scale can be said to be "pre-eminent" among pentatonic scales, neither in wikipedia nor elsewhere does this give it sole proprietorship of the term pentatonic scale, and you have repeatedly ignored me. TheScotch 19:47, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Joseph Schillinger: Arabic precedent

Re: "Formulated already by Arab musicians in the 7th century A.D., the scale was called 'Zer ef Kend,' meaning 'string of pearls,' the idea being that the two different sizes of intervals were like two different sizes of pearls (see Joseph Schillinger, The Schillinger System of Musical Composition, Vol 1).":

Whether or not this allegation is true (I've not encountered it before), Schillinger is a dubious source. TheScotch 11:38, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

And I doubt that Arab musicians would be using pure semitones and tones, anyway (agree with the point on Schillinger, too). Christopher Melen 21:28, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "pure [my emphasis] semitones and tones". The mainstream of Western European music theory posits essentially four kinds of semitones: the 256:243 minor semitone (Pythagorean minor second), the 2,187:2,048 apotome (Pythagorean augmented unison), the 16:15 just minor second, and the 2^(1/12):1 equally tempered semitone. It posits essentially three kinds of whole tones: the 9:8 Pythagorean whole tone, the 10:9 just whole tone, and the 2^(1/6):1 equally tempered whole tone.

Much of the writing about the diminished scale assumes it a subset of the equally tempered dodecatonic scale, and all of the intervals of the equally tempered dodecatonic scale except perfect unisons, perfect octaves, and perfect octave multiples are generally considered to be impure.

When the diminished scale is used in tonal contexts, however, as it has very often been used in jazz since the bop era, its minor seconds and augmented unison (or doubly augmented unison, depending on the particular context and spelling) are functionally distinguished. TheScotch 05:57, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the eloquent theory lesson, but I'm a doctor of music (I'm sure you are), and didn't need to be told any of that. For the record, however, what I meant by 'pure semitone' was what most musicians/composers surely understand by the term 'semitone' - the equal-tempered one. It is highly likely that Arab musicians, if indeed they ever did use a version of the octatonic scale, would use intervals that would sound decidedly 'out of tune' to the average Western listener, and therefore be characterised, in an informal sense, as 'impure'. Christopher Melen 05:46, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Your qualifications are not relevant, only your ability to write constructive prose and cite sources. Which intervals that sound out of tune would be used? Claiming that "some" intervals may sound out of tune to the "average listener" would seem to be original research. Also, Wikipedia has a policy requiring a world view, and not the possible views of some supposed European folks. Hyacinth 15:45, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I have absolutely no idea which intervals, and I was not citing my qualifications in relation to the main article. What I said was just part of an informal comment to a comment to a comment, and I didn't add it (nor did I have any intention of adding it) to the article itself. But again for the record, that non-Western tunings often sound 'out of tune' to average Western ears hardly constitutes a piece of 'original research', or a 'personal view'. Christopher Melen 16:36, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Look, I only wanted to know what you meant by "pure".

Re: "For the record, however, what I meant by 'pure semitone' was what most musicians/composers surely understand by the term 'semitone' - the equal-tempered one":

I do have to say that this strikes me as an odd remark. It doesn't comport with my experience, and neither does it comport with the history of Western European intonation. The equally tempered dodecatonic scale was broached as a compromise, and I would argue (along with George Perle) that serial music is the only significant body of music that systematically embraces it as a theoretical entity in and of itself. In any case, if it is true that Arabic music uses (or used) a scale form that can reasonably be identified as the diminished scale and we can verify that it does, then this information does have a place in this article. I just would prefer a more mainstream and less controversial source than Schillinger, that's all. TheScotch 19:00, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

The etymology of the alleged phrase (currently claimed to be Persian instead of Arabic) is a problem too. "Zar ef Kend" is not a phrase in either language. Whatever the original phrase might have been is now heavily garbled. The closest match I could find would be Persian زر فكنده zar-e fekandeh 'scattered gold'. Which would make it even more garbled; nothing to do with pearls or strings. A shame, because the name "string of pearls" is such a pretty metaphor, and an apt description, I would hate to lose it. But the claim as it now stands is unsupported linguistically, whatever musical validity it may or may not hold. This calls for fixing of some sort. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 19:21, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Schillinger's basis for "Zer ef Kend" was surely 'Zīrāfkand', the name of one of the old Persian modes. -- David Russell Watson — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:C536:9669:81E:FE:8711:2487 (talk) 06:25, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

"Forte"

Why is the set # "instrusive and superfluous"? Hyacinth (talk) 10:20, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Because it's particular to Forte's insular theory (of pre-serial atonal early twentieth-century European art music), whereas as the diminished scale itself appears in all sorts of musics ("modern" classical, Romantic classical, jazz, ethnic folk, etc). TheScotch (talk)

Doesn't that argument apply to the term "octatonic" which was coined after some of the musics you mention? Hyacinth (talk) 10:58, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why it would be superfluous. Obviously he didn't invent the scale or anything, but it was classified in his notable system. Gold was discovered and used long before it was known where or how it fit into the periodic table, and continues to be used by people with little understanding of chemistry, but that still appears at the top of its article. It might be nice, though, if it appeared in some sort of infobox that was used on the various pages for notable pitch collections. Rigadoun (talk) 22:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should have a guideline at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (music). Hyacinth (talk) 07:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Citation needed

• In popular music, an example of the use of the octatonic scale appears in the Radiohead song "Just".

Hyacinth (talk) 18:29, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Confusion of scale with set

"The twelve tones of the chromatic scale are covered by three disjoint diminished seventh chords. The notes from exactly two such seventh-chords combination [sic] form an octatonic collection. Because there are exactly three ways to select two from three, there are exactly three octatonic scales in the 12-tone system." That's inaccurate. There might be exactly three sets with that description, but a scale is not a set. The scale concept includes a tonic (or root for chord scales). There are 12 possible tonics (ignoring enharmonic spellings). Therefore, there are always 12 possible scales of any given shape. It doesn't matter if any of the scales use identical pitches. The tonics or roots make them different. C diminished 7 is not the same as A diminished 7, and neither are the related scales the same. That's why they have different names! Since there are two possible eight-member symmetrical diminished scale shapes, that makes exactly 24 scales, not three. 76.94.246.25 (talk) 19:50, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

??? Properties ???

In the "Properties section of the article I find this:

For example:

   * semitone: (C, C?), (D?, E) (F?, G), (A, B?)
   * whole step: (C?, D?), (E, F?), (G, A), (B?, C)
   * minor third:(C, E?), (F?, A), (C?, E), (G, B?)
   * major third:(C, E), (F?, B?), (E?, G), (A, C?)
   * perfect fourth: (C?, F?), (B?, E?), (G, C), (E, A)
   * tritone: (C, F?), (E?, A), (C?, G), (E, B?)

But nowhere in the article do I find an explanation of what all these question marks are supposed to mean. Nor am I familiar with the use of the question mark in this context from music theory.

This occurs in several other parts of the article, also without explanation. If this is some recent notational development it needs to be explained, preferrably early in the article. Or perhaps it would be a better idea to use a more widely familiar conventional notation to express whatever is being attempted here, if that is possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.206.185.142 (talk) 05:08, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

It means that your font doesn't contain the correct accidental characters (♯ sharp; ♭ flat). Double sharp (talk) 14:20, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Glinka's Ruslan as a tribute to his 'idol' Liszt

Concerning this statement in the article

Liszt was to become an idol of the Russian school, and starting with Glinka's opera Ruslan and Lyudmila (first performed 1842) the diminished scale was often used by Russian composers to evoke scenes of magic and exotic mystery

For all I know, all examples of 'symmetrical scales' in Ruslan have nothing to do with both 'octatonic' (Chernomor's music is rather 'hexatonic') and Liszt. I would appreciate a citation from a scholarly work which asserts that wholetone-scales by Glinka in Ruslan is a trubute to the 'idol' Liszt. Olorulus (talk) 08:34, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Liszt

I've just added a reference to the Liszt Bagatelle ohne Tonart. (Funny that nobody else had done so before me but never mind). However i am not suff familiar with this dialect of HTML to know how to insert the relevant bars of music. tf@dpmms.cam.ac.uk

Your point is well taken. The Liszt example is often cited in connection with the evolution of the octatonic scale, and a verifying citation should be easily found. I do not understand what HTML has to do with inserting bars of music (bar numbers?), unless you mean a musical example, which cannot be done with HTML as far as I am aware. On Wikipedia, the usual method for that is LilyPond.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:55, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

What i meant was that i don't know how insert a pdf of the first few bars of the sheet music in the dialect of html that wikipaedia uses. I know how do it using the version we have in my university. It would be good if someone could insert it in line. I will do it myself if i ever learn how to do it! And when you say `a verifying citation' you presumably mean something other than a link to another wikipaedia entry, co's i put one of those in... [still learning! - tf]

I think a point worth making about this Liszt example is that it is surely not a coincidence. (One feels with some of the earlier examples cited that they are little more than coincidence). Liszt is saying, explicitly: `Hey, fellers, i am writing a piece IN NO KEY'; the use of the octatonic scale is surely a central part of the scheme. I am no Liszt scholar, so i don't know whether Liszt ever wrote about this. It may be worth looking further afield in Liszt for other examples.