Quote:
Originally Posted by AX7221
The pattern of tones and semitones may look arbitrary, and to me i guess they do. The way i look at it is somehow (the greeks i believe) figured out a way (circle of 5ths i assume) to sort've "optimize" the seven note scale. for example for 6 out of the 7 notes of the scale you can play either a major or a minor chord without playing a note out of key, which is a very elementary and good sounding chord. So by picking this pattern for the diatonic scales the scales become very useful, and i think that's why they're so popular. (that's a question i used to think about (where did this pattern come from?) so i figured i throw my answer out there in case anyone was wondering the same thing - or if im mistake please correct me)
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You're right AX - It was them Greeks. They had a four string "lyre" called a
tetrachord (meaning 4 strings) and one of the ways they tuned it was by spacing the notes as TONE TONE SEMITONE.
That mini scale became known as the DIATONIC TETRACHORD.
Later they expanded it to 8 notes by adding another tetrachord on top so you had T T S + T T S. As the two tetrachords were separated by a tone, they combined to give TTS (T) TTS - and that became the diatonic scale.