[Sugar-devel] Outreachy - Going Beyond Equal Temperament in Music Blocks

[Devin Ulibarri]

On Wed, 2017-03-22 at 13:25 +0530, Sachithra Dangalla wrote:
> Mode is a new term to me and I'm still reading about it ([1] and [2]).
> I'm finding it hard to understand the relationship between temperament
> and mode or their implementations, any advice on it would be great. Is
> mode already presented in music blocks? 
> 
There is a "mode" widget.

As for temperament and mode, these are the important principles...

* You have collection of pitches that most often repeats at the octave.

e.g.

CDEFGAB(CDEFG...)

[N.B. this number of pitches can be any number, but some collections are
more common than others.]

* A mode is the name/quality that collection of pitches has/imbues when
starting (or "centering around") from a particular pitch in that
collection.

Start from C or D or E or F etc. changes the sound of the music.

* Temperament is the precise tuning of those notes, and thus the
relationship of the tuning of those notes with each other.

For example, if the tuning in Hz of E is changed, the relationship
between C and E changes too... thus affecting the sound.

So, with different temperaments, the same modes can sound very
different.

Devin