STEEMIT MUSIC 103: TONALITY

In this lecture, we will be looking at tonal music. Therefore, TONALITY is music that has a clear tonal center. In other words, there is a note that all the other notes seem to lead to or circle around. In TONALITY, the whole melody of the music seems to be leading to a central note. Even in the middle of the tune, we are aware of this centrally important note. In fact, if the music is stopped in the middle away from that note you could probably still sing or locate the central note. This central note, which is the goal of all the other notes in the melody, is called the tonic.

Music that has such a clear tonal center is called tonal music. This goal note is often the first note and usually the last note of a melody. It is, it's the first note of the scale of notes used to create the melody.
Also, there are some kinds of music in which no note is more important than the others. There is no sense of an inevitable destination note. Such music is called ATONAL.
In this discuss, we will only be talking about tonal music, but as you listen to music, you might or inevitably notice that much music seems to fall somewhere between tonal and atonal. There seemed to be tonal centers, but they may change so quickly or so often, that we can't identify a single tonic. As you listen to music try to hear the tonic. Is there a note that the other notes seem to gravitate to? Remember that that the tonic pitch does not need to sound in order to be present.

When we say that a song has a single tonal center or tonic, we also are saying that it is in a single key. That is, it is built from a set of notes that have the tonic pitch as their most important goal note. Usually, these notes can be arranged in stepwise order as a scale, with the tonic pitch as the first and last note.

Credit

Often, in tonal music, the tunes are built from a seven note scale centered around a single tonic. That scale, is fondly called a major scale. If we have a case where the tonic note is C, then the scale used to build this melody is C Major. To put it another way, we say that this tune is in C Major. The tonic note, the starting note of the scale is C. And the mode is major.

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Thank you!

@fanen
STEEMIT MUSIC TUTOR