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Culture Smart: The Musical Scale Across Cultures

by Your friends at OIC on November 24, 2013

Children learning to play the violin, symbolizing the different musical scales across cultures

Learning to play different styles of music

Tonal Patterns and Changing Intervals

When you first learn to play an instrument, the first series of notes taught is called a scale. A scale is a series of ascending pitches, usually ending on the octave, the same note, at a higher pitch. Music from different cultures uses different intervals between the notes of an octave.

If you’ve seen The Sound of Music, you know the Western music major scale: do, re, mi, fa, so la, ti, do. It consists of 7 unique notes, with the 8th note being the octave. Listen to a C Major Scale:

 

In the Middle East, the scale is also 7 unique pitches plus the octave, but it differs by several notes from the Western scale. A common song using the Middle Eastern scale is Hava Nagila. Listen to a C Middle Eastern scale:

 

Unlike the other two, the Chinese scale has only 5 pitches. Most Chinese folk tunes can be played using just the black keys on the keyboard. Listen to a C Chinese Scale:

 

Starting on C, the middle key of the piano, typically called Middle C, this chart shows the actual notes played on each scale:

Music-Chart-2

There are several theories on why different musical scales were devised in different cultures. One is that scales are derived from the sounds made by the language spoken and the tonality of pronunciation. Another has to do with religion and superstition determining the number of notes (5 being lucky in Asian culture and 7 in Greek) and the intervals.

Hear music from all over the world at the World Music Network.

Comment on this post below.

 Image © iStockphoto

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