Special post: "Hit Me With Music" on Scales

Hey guys, how's everyone doing? Sulli here with a special post for you. Today, Uri and Anu from "Hit Me With Music" are going to post an article about scales. If you like this article then feel free to subscribe to the right by inputting your email or following me on social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and SoundCloud). Let us know what you think in the comments below or emailing me at the address above. Thanks for reading!

Hi, Adam Sullivan Music Theory Blog readers! We're Uri and Anu, and we're writing a really unique introduction to music for you over the next few months. Music textbooks try to teach you how to read clefs, whole notes, and quarter rests without telling you why they're important, and other pop music books dive into the neuroscience behind music with a limited crash course on how music works. There's no simple primer on music that teaches music through questions that people really care about, like "What makes music sound happy vs. sad?" and "What makes rock sound like rock?" So, we're writing a book to give you an easy-to-read intro to the concepts you've always wanted to understand, like chords, rhythm, and harmony, through answering questions you actually care about! First, let's start with a sample from our book:

To understand music, we must understand scales.

Our everyday lives are generally full of units of measurement, and many of those units are essentially arbitrary. If you’re driving down a quiet street and a cop pulls you over for doing 90 miles per hour, the thing he’s measuring (your speed) may be real and meaningful but the units he’s using (miles, hours, miles per hour) are essentially arbitrary, the products of a quirky set of historical accidents. There is nothing fundamental about the length of an hour that makes it an especially meaningful unit of time: if our Babylonian forerunners had done things differently we could easily be using a basic unit that was some other length. Equally, there is nothing fundamental about the length of a mile that makes it an especially meaningful unit of distance; for that reason, a lot of countries have in fact chosen a different (equally arbitrary) unit called “a kilometre” to do the same work.

By contrast, some of our common units have a deeper logic to them. The length of a day was not decided for us by some ancient civilization  “a day” is the non-arbitrary length of time that it takes the earth to spin once around its axis. This gives days some very useful and meaningful properties.

How about music? In the same way that time (on earth) is organised around these things called “days,” music is organised around things called scales: sets of musical notes lined up in order. But is the length of a scale arbitrary (like the length of a metre) or fundamental (like the length of a day)? Let’s find out."

You can read the rest of the sample segment we wrote here. If you like Julie Andrews and Judy Garland, we promise it'll be a fun read :).

The Kickstarter for our book runs through this Thursday, July 4. We've already reached our initial $1,000 goal, and are now reaching for a stretch goal of $1,500! If we raise $1,500, we commit to adding an online multimedia supplement to our book within three months of publication. Keep in mind that with any contribution $5 or above, you'll get a copy of the Hit Me With Music e-book as a perk!

We also want to hear your ideas and suggestions for the book and multimedia supplement! Write to us at hitmewithmusicbook@gmail.com.