Timeline for Finding the Shadaj (tonic) in Hindustani Sangeet (North Indian Classical Music)
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 25, 2020 at 20:27 | comment | added | user45266 | "There is nothing stopping from defining my song as an ostenato that repeats the above 4 notes over and over again" Yes, that is valid. It's perfectly fine to do that, and in that case you would be right that the idea of a key is useless. But that's not very common in Western Music. Ostinatos are common, sure, but songs usually don't just consist of a couple of notes in isolation. (Also, you can ping me so that I get notified about a comment by using the @ symbol, like so: @Khalian) | |
| Mar 25, 2020 at 20:24 | comment | added | user45266 | Yes, but those modern western pop songs that do that still make sense in a certain key. As an example, the first part of "Livin' on a Prayer" has the underlying ostinato EEBDEEBD. Yes, those notes can belong to many keys. However, the song's melodies (and the rest of the song in general) make it obvious that E minor is the only sensible interpretation (or G major, but that's another argument). | |
| Mar 24, 2020 at 19:27 | comment | added | Khalian | As a counter example to your assertion, there is nothing stopping from defining my song as an ostenato that repeats the above 4 notes over and over again. In fact, a lot of modern western pop do in fact does it as their background score. | |
| Mar 24, 2020 at 19:13 | comment | added | user45266 | I think the best "general case" should be at least a piece of music - yes, four notes is usually ambiguous, but usually an entire song has enough contextual information to define a particular tonic (at least in Western music, maybe it's different for North Indian?). No, there's nothing mathematical about it, but that doesn't mean that it's not possible to infer the "correct key". | |
| Jun 30, 2019 at 4:50 | history | edited | Khalian | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 263 characters in body
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| Jun 30, 2019 at 2:20 | history | answered | Khalian | CC BY-SA 4.0 |