The Prime Scales

On a piano keyboard, the notes of the C Major scale have one shape and color (the "white keys"), while the notes that are chromatic to C Major have a different shape and color (the "black keys"). This seems awfully arbitrary. Why C? Why not A, B, or Bb?

On a digital piano, one can easily transpose the keyboard so that any given diatonic scale's notes fall on the white keys. That's cool. But what about other scales? There's more to music than the diatonic scale.

One of the nice things about a "virtual" on-screen keyboard is that one can change the way individual buttons are drawn "on the fly." That allows us to draw the notes/buttons that are in "the current scale" one way, while drawing those that are out of the scale a different way.

The latest version of my Flex iGetIt! keyboard, shown below, allows the user to select one of the Prime Scales from a ComboBox, with the coloration of the keyboard's notes/buttons changing accordingly. The notes of the current scale are the "white keys," whereas the out-of-scale notes are the "black keys."


Why is this a "good thing"?

There are scads of "scale books" that describe scads of "scales." I don't understand this.

As far as I can tell, there are really only a half-dozen scales that are relevant to tonal music -- the previously-mentioned Prime Scales. The scale books are fat with "scales" because

• they confuse scale and mode, treating different modes of the same scale as if they were different scales, and
• they confuse scale and key, treating different keys of the same scale as if they were different scales.

This conceptual confusion can lead to a combinatorial explosion of "scales." Do the math: six Prime Scales times seven modes per scale times fifteen possible keys is 6 * 7 * 15 = 630 possible "scales." Six hundred and thirty! From an educational perspective, that might as well be "infinity." No wonder people hate learning scales! Using the traditional instruments, notation, and theory, there is no end to it. You could study and practice your whole life and never master them all.

I don't see the point. This explosion of "scales" is an artifact of traditional music technology (i.e., traditional instruments and notation). They are not meaningfully distict, except that -- using traditional technology -- they require different notation and different performance gestures. The explosion is not a theory problem; it's a technology problem. Using JiMS, you only have to master the six Prime Scales. Six! That's less than 1/100'th of the traditional number. Two orders of magnitude!

More importantly, by clarifying the relationships between scales, modes, and keys (and chords, and melodies, and tunings, and so on), JiMS inter-relates these important musical concepts, thereby providing a strong theoretical foundation for understanding music.