79 Fun Facts About Music Theory

How many lines does a standard musical staff have?

Plainchant staves had four lines, and guitar tablature uses six, one per string.

The mnemonic 'Every Good Boy Does Fine' names the lines of which clef?

The spaces spell FACE. Bass-clef readers get 'Good Boys Do Fine Always' and 'All Cows Eat Grass' instead.

Which orchestral instrument is the main user of the alto clef?

Cello, bassoon and trombone use the tenor clef for high passages, but the alto clef is essentially viola territory.

Middle C sits one ledger line below which set of five lines?

Seen from below, it is one ledger line above the bass staff, which is why it is called 'middle'.

In scientific pitch notation, middle C is written how?

The A used for tuning, at 440 Hz, is A4 in the same system.

By what fraction does a single dot lengthen a note?

A second dot adds half of the first dot's value, so a double-dotted note is one and three-quarters times its plain length.

What do British musicians call the whole note?

Minim is the half note, crotchet the quarter and quaver the eighth. Americans and Britons still talk past each other here.

Around 1250, who invented distinct note shapes to show different durations?

Before that, chant notation showed pitch shape but not rhythm. Vitry's Ars nova treatise of 1320 later allowed both 2:1 and 3:1 ratios between values.

The lower number of a time signature is always what kind of number?

It names the note value being counted: 2 for the half note, 4 for the quarter, 8 for the eighth. Irrational meters are the rare exception.

Which of these time signatures is a compound meter?

Compound meters group the beat into threes, so 6/8 is felt as two dotted-quarter beats, not six eighths.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet's 'Take Five' is written in which time signature?

The same group also played 'Unsquare Dance' in 7/4 and 'Blue Rondo à la Turk' in 9/8 grouped 2+2+2+3.

A key signature with a single sharp indicates which key?

That sharp is always F-sharp, and the same signature also serves E minor.

What is the interval pattern of a major scale?

Start it on any note and you get a major scale; the sharps or flats needed to keep the pattern become that key's signature.

The first known circle-of-fifths diagram appears in a 1677 treatise called what?

Its author, Mykola Dyletsky, presented theory as a composer's tool. Heinichen drew his own 'Musical Circle' independently in 1711.

Which key is the relative minor of C major?

They share an empty key signature; a frequent G-sharp is the tell that a tune is really in the minor.

How many semitones make up a perfect fifth?

Five semitones make a perfect fourth. Stack a fourth on a fifth and you have an octave.

In just tuning, the perfect fifth has which frequency ratio?

The octave is 2:1 and the fourth 4:3, so the fifth is the next-simplest ratio and the easiest interval to tune by ear.

The tuning system named after Pythagoras actually dates back to which civilisation?

It stacks pure 3:2 fifths, and modern theory writers pinned it on the Greek philosopher long after the fact.

How many cents wide is a tritone in equal temperament?

It splits the 1,200-cent octave exactly in half, which is why it is its own inversion.

What does the Latin tag 'diabolus in musica' mean?

The original phrase, 'mi contra fa', was aimed at a clashing minor second, and only later became attached to the tritone.

Playing only white keys from D up to D gives which mode?

The same white keys from E to E produce the modern Phrygian, and from B to B the seldom-used Locrian.

Which mode is a major scale with its fourth degree raised by a half step?

It corresponds to the fifth Gregorian church mode on F, though medieval singers usually flattened the B and turned it back into plain F major.

Every triad built from the notes of a whole-tone scale has which quality?

With no leading tone and every step the same size, no note stands out, which is why film composers reach for it to suggest dreams.

In C major, on which note is the key's only diminished triad built?

B–D–F sits on the seventh degree, so it is also called the leading-tone triad and functions like a dominant.

When a chart just says 'seventh chord' with no qualifier, which type is usually meant?

That is a major triad with a minor seventh on top. The seventh began life as a passing decoration before it was allowed to be part of the chord.

The IV–I progression heard at the end of many hymns is nicknamed what?

Its formal name is the plagal cadence. Theorists count four main cadence types: authentic, half, plagal and deceptive.

A cadence in which V resolves to a chord other than the tonic, usually vi, is called what?

It is also called interrupted or false. The finale of Mahler's Ninth opens with a whole string of them.

Ending a minor-key piece on a major tonic chord is known as what?

Bach does it at the end of Jesu, meine Freude. Philosopher Peter Kivy called it 'absolute music's happy ending'.

A Neapolitan chord is a major chord built on which altered scale degree?

It usually appears in first inversion in minor keys, hence the label 'Neapolitan sixth'.

Spelled with different note names, Wagner's Tristan chord turns out to be which everyday chord?

The notes F, B, D-sharp and G-sharp are ordinary; what unsettled listeners in 1865 was their refusal to belong to any key.

What does the dynamic marking pp stand for?

Composers have pushed the idea to absurd lengths: Verdi's Otello asks for seven p's.

What does the abbreviation sfz ask a performer to do?

Unlike a forte, it applies only to a single beat, then the previous dynamic resumes.

Which composer marks a bassoon solo pppppp, six p's, in his Sixth Symphony?

The same composer swings the other way with ffff in the 1812 Overture. Bassoonists often quietly hand the passage to a bass clarinet.

Whose opera Le Grand Macabre contains a marking of ten f's?

His Cello Concerto opens at eight p's, so he covered both ends of the scale.

What does the tempo marking andante literally mean?

Allegro literally means 'cheerful', which is why it signals mood as well as speed.

Which Italian tempo term simply means 'quickly' and is faster than allegro?

Allegro also connotes joy from its everyday Italian meaning; this term carries no mood at all, just speed.

Two slow tempo terms swapped places after the Baroque era. Which is true in modern usage?

In the Baroque period the order was reversed. Allegretto has drifted too, from 'a bit faster than andante' to 'a bit slower than allegro'.

Who patented the wind-up metronome in 1815?

Beethoven was among the first composers to adopt it, publishing markings for his first eight symphonies.

Which notation symbol is nicknamed a 'birdseye' or 'cyclops eye'?

Placed over a bar line rather than a note, it marks the end of a section instead of a held note.

The instruction da capo literally means 'from the' what?

Dal segno sends you back to a sign instead, and a coda, Italian for 'tail', finishes things off.

Staccato is Italian for what?

Before 1850, dots, dashes and wedges all meant roughly the same thing; the wedge now marks the more emphatic staccatissimo.

Legato is Italian for what?

It is usually shown by a slur, though strictly a slur and legato are not the same instruction.

Two notes written differently but sounding the same pitch, like C-sharp and D-flat, are what?

In older tunings such as quarter-comma meantone they were not quite the same pitch, which produced the howling 'wolf' intervals.

The howling 'wolf fifth' is a hallmark of which tuning system?

Eleven fifths sound sweet; the twelfth is really a diminished sixth, usually G-sharp to E-flat, and beats horribly.

The ISO 16 standard fixes which note at 440 Hz?

Middle C itself works out to about 261.6 Hz under that standard.

The May 1939 conference that agreed on A440 met at the London headquarters of which broadcaster?

British piano tuners had used 439 since 1899; James Swinburne pointed out that 439 is prime and 440 is far easier to synthesise electronically.

What pitch did France adopt as its national standard in the 1860s?

Austria followed in 1885. Scheibler had proposed 440 back in 1834, but it took a century to win.

In equal temperament, what is the frequency ratio between adjacent semitones?

Roughly 1.0595, so twelve of them multiply out to exactly 2, the octave.

Zhu Zaiyu, who calculated equal temperament precisely in 1584, was a prince of which dynasty?

Simon Stevin reached a similar result in Europe a year later, apparently independently. Zhu spent thirty years on the problem.

How many cents are there in one equal-tempered semitone?

A single cent is too small to hear as a step, which makes it handy for describing tiny tuning differences.

Who introduced the cent as a unit for measuring intervals in an 1885 paper?

He used it to compare scales from around the world in his translation of Helmholtz's On the Sensations of Tone.

The hymn 'Ut queant laxis', source of the solfège syllables, honours which saint?

Guido of Arezzo took the first syllable of each line: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. 'Si' was added later.

Why did Sarah Glover change 'si' to 'ti' in the 19th century?

Her tonic sol-fa system spread through English-speaking choirs, which is why Americans sing 'ti' and Italians still sing 'si'.

Guido of Arezzo's most widely circulated treatise was called what?

Only Boethius's treatise was more widely read in the Middle Ages. Guido claimed his methods cut a singer's training from ten years to one or two.

The Guidonian hand was a mnemonic that helped singers learn to do what?

Guido himself described only a rudimentary version; the fully drawn hand appears in manuscripts more than a century after his death.

What were the basic notation marks used for chant before the five-line staff existed?

The earliest ones showed only the general shape of a melody, not exact pitches or rhythms.

The frequencies of the harmonic series relate to the fundamental how?

The second harmonic is an octave up, the third a fifth above that, and the pitch you perceive is usually the fundamental.

A note one octave above 440 Hz has what frequency?

Doubling the frequency gives the octave; halving it, 220 Hz, gives the octave below.

How many channels can a single MIDI cable carry?

Each channel can drive a separate device. The spec was published in August 1983.

In what year was the MIDI specification published?

Dave Smith and Ikutaro Kakehashi demonstrated it at that year's Winter NAMM show and shared a Technical Grammy for it in 2013.

In sonata form, what is the section between the exposition and the recapitulation called?

Beethoven stretched the coda that follows into a fourth section of nearly equal weight.

The word ostinato comes from the Italian for what?

Ravel's Boléro, 'Carol of the Bells' and 'Baba O'Riley' are all built on one.

Placing accents where they would not normally fall, making the music 'off-beat', is called what?

Ragtime, rock and rap all lean on it; producer Rick Snoman claims all dance music depends on it.

In rhythm, a hemiola fits three equal beats into the time normally taken by how many?

The Greek word means 'one and a half', and it originally described the 3:2 pitch ratio of a fifth.

Who published a 'law of the twelve tones' in 1919, four years before Schoenberg's better-known method?

Hauer's system used unordered six-note groups he called tropes; Schoenberg's ordered rows won the argument.

In an Alberti bass, the notes of each chord are played in what order?

Mozart's K 545 sonata opens with it, and so does the bass line of the 1962 surf hit 'Pipeline'.

When a standard clarinet plays a written C, which concert pitch sounds?

The instrument does not transpose anything; its part is simply written a tone higher than it sounds.

Which instrument sounds an octave lower than written?

Piccolo and celesta sound an octave higher than written, and the glockenspiel two octaves higher.

A pentatonic scale that contains no semitones is called what?

Japanese music sets the anhemitonic yo scale against the hemitonic in scale.

Raising the seventh of a natural minor scale creates which interval between its sixth and seventh degrees?

That gap gives harmonic minor its exotic flavour and is what a ring of church bells descends through.

The flat sign descends from a rounded form of which letter?

The 'square' form of the same letter split into the sharp and natural signs.

Who published Gradus ad Parnassum, the 1725 treatise that laid out five species of counterpoint?

Later theorists closely imitated the work, and many of its melodic rules trace back to solfeggio.

In species counterpoint, what is the simple, unchanging part the student writes against called?

The Latin means 'fixed melody'; because it allows so little freedom, species counterpoint is called 'strict' counterpoint.

What name is given to the fifth species of counterpoint, which combines the first four?

The first four species are note against note, two against one, four against one, and offset notes as suspensions.

Which form is described as perhaps the most complex contrapuntal convention?

Rounds, canons and fugues are all examples of imitative counterpoint.

What is a chord called when its notes are sounded one after another rather than together?

The most common chord is the three-note triad; added-tone and extended chords can have many more notes.

The word 'chord' derives from which older word meaning agreement or harmonious sound?

It became 'cord' in Middle English; the spelling 'chord' was adopted in the 17th century to avoid confusion with string-type cords.

In movable-do solfège, which syllable is sung on the tonic note of a key?

Scales begin and end on their tonic and are named after it, which is why the C major scale starts on C.

Guerino Mazzola's work gave counterpoint theory what kind of foundation?

His model offers a structural explanation for forbidden parallel fifths and the dissonant fourth; Octavio Agustin extended it to microtonal contexts.