“ For historical reasons, there are no sharps or flats between the notes B/C, and E/F.”
Mmmm yes, and that’s also a bit confusing because it dodges around why the scale was and is 7 notes to begin with.
Mmmm yes, and that’s also a bit confusing because it dodges around why the scale was and is 7 notes to begin with.
It's common in Bebop to add a passing tone to otherwise heptatonic scales. Consecutive semitones are also a common feature in blues.
That may well be their main function, especially in bebop (it's not so certain in blues), but they're still considered as part of the scale.
> For examples in a bebop scale you don’t tend to arpeggiate using both the consecutive tones.
That's true for any non-chord tones. The intervals are still very common (in bebop you commonly simply walk the whole scale up and/or down in straight 8ths or 16ths, playing adding the passing tone for the chord tones to end up on the downbeats).
> And then - just to keep it confusing - we have to split both of those groups of five semitones, so... we arbitrarily split them as 2-2-1 (i.e. WbWbWW keys). Thus the white/black keyboard pattern, starting at C, of WbWbWWbWbWW. If only someone had explained all this in grade school.
We don't arbitrarily split them! It was very much made on purpose to match the diatonic scales, which are very natural due to being a chain of fifths. E.g. from F ascending 5ths: F-C-G-D-A-E-B-¡F!
It's not arbitrary that we based modern keyboards around heptatonic scales! Then we added some black notes so we can transpose, which is pretty convenient on 12-TET.
I'll just link the relevant wikipedia article: