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Comment by emerged | Hacker News Reader

The naming makes perfect sense with C Major, or A minor. Because the in-key notes are letters. The weirdness is how we then apply those same names to every other key. I tend to be very C Major focused when playing piano, and just use the transpose function to change keys. Things are much simpler that way IMO.

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Every major scale contains one note with each name (ABCDEFG). For example, Bb major is Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G, A.

If you start with C major (no sharps), and ascend in 5ths (G, D, A, etc.) then you add one sharp to the previous major scale to get the major scale starting on the new note. The added sharp each time is the 7th of the scale. So G major just has F#, D major adds also C#, A major adds also G# etc.

If you start with C major (no flats), and descend in 5ths (equivalently: ascend in 4ths) (F, Bb, Eb, etc.) then you add one flat to the previous major scale to get the major scale starting on the new note. The added flat each time is the 4th of the scale. So F major just has Bb, Bb major adds also Eb, Eb major adds also Ab etc.

Key signatures put the sharps or flats in this order.

The two meet in the middle:

  F# major: F#, G#, A#, B,  C#, D#, E#  (key with 6 sharps)
  Gb major: Gb, Ab, Bb, Cb, Db, Eb, F   (key with 6 flats)

I.e. on the piano F# and Gb are the same key, G# and Ab are the same key etc.

Oh interesting, that makes sense. I’ve been fiddling with keys and modes for a long time and somehow didn’t even notice that pattern.

I think it makes sense for the other keys, too. Let’s say we had twelve distinct letters, A–L. Here’s a key:

    H J K A C E F

First of all, which key is it? We know it starts with H. But is it major or minor? We have to mentally calculate all the intervals, rather than just looking for the sharps and flats.

And calculating the intervals is annoying! You could go 2122212, which doesn’t correspond to major or minor — it’s dorian.

Meanwhile, in current notation, you’d just look at the sharps (C# and F# = D major) and the starting note (E).

Your argument feels quite subjective - the exact opposite argument seems like it could just as valid to somebody else: "looking at sharps is annoying, with 12 distinct notes you can just count the intervals".

I think in an alternate universe where a 12 (or 6+6) notation had historically been used instead of 7+5, the 7+5 option would seem quite unnatural to most people. In any case, starting from a blank slate without historic context, the 7+5 naming scheme just isn't intuitive.

6+6 doesn’t make sense, though — there are 7 notes in any given diatonic scale. You could change the scales around so that they only have 6 notes, but then we’re discussing an entirely different system rather than just a different notation.

Anyway, you can count the intervals now. For example, I know that there are five half steps between F and A#. It is slightly annoying to keep the B and E exceptions in mind, but it’s definitely possible — most people just find it easier to use the sharps and flats as a shortcut.

A 6+6 notation can be used for any kind of scale, including diatonic ones. Just like a 7+5 notation can be used for non-diatonic scales.

A 6+6 system makes more sense in terms of fundamentals - there's the exact same distance between each "full" letter. That doesn't limit what kind of scales you can annotate with the letters at all.

Sure, but the flip side is that every scale now has one repeated letter and at least one sharp or flat. Take C major; in hypothetical 6+6 notation, it becomes

    C D E E# F# A# B#

In fact, I think every diatonic scale in 6+6 notation will have three or four sharps/flats.

I just tend to think of scales in terms of numbers and not letters, so the pain of having an "uneven" naming for the notes is worse for me than any pain from no longer having letters line up perfectly with two specific scales. But I can see why the current naming is useful for piano players.

As a piano player, let's figure out the best way to arrange the keys on the keyboard first, and figure out the names afterwards.

My favorite arrangement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicki%E2%80%93Hayden_note_layo...

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