Scale | Definition, Music Theory, & Types - Britannica

Scale and melody

Scales have proven to be important in the analysis of folk music and the music of nonliterate cultures, but scholars have been obliged to deduce the scales through a study of the actual music, since the creators of the music were not cognizant of scales as theoretical concepts. By contrast, music of the most highly developed cultures (variously described as classical music, art music, cultivated music, and high-culture music) is created in full awareness of rules or conventions pertaining to scale usage.

In view of the wide range of possibilities, a surprisingly small number of scale types predominate throughout the world. The intervals found in non-Western music often approximate rather closely the basic whole-step and half-step intervals that are used in Western music. Variations from Western intervals are often expressed as measurements in cents (100 cents = one half step in equal temperament, the pattern of 12 equal half steps used in Western music). The task of identifying scales in non-Western music is complicated further by the occasional appearance of highly variable intervals or by singing techniques that produce sounds whose pitches cannot be specified accurately through conventional notation, like the “tumbling strains” (falling melodies) described by German musicologist Curt Sachs in the singing of Australian Aboriginal peoples.

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Although music performed only on one pitch does exist, the study of scales properly begins with the occurrence of at least two different pitches. Scales consisting of only one or two intervals (i.e., two or three pitches) can be found throughout the world in monophonic music (that consisting of a single unharmonized melodic line), though they are perhaps most numerous in Ceylon, eastern Siberia, California Indian cultures, and in regions near the Ural Mountains. Such scales commonly display a narrow range in which the pitches are separated by a half step, a whole step, or a minor third (one and one-half steps, as, C–E♭). Larger skips in two- and three-note scales do occur but are less frequent. Some simple scales have probably acquired additional pitches through a tendency to fill in large skips with intervening pitches. Another process by which scales may have expanded is the transposition within a single melody of one characteristic melodic motive (identifiable fragment) to a different pitch level, thus creating additional scale degrees.

Occasionally, primitive melodies apparently generated by motivic transposition also contain evidence of emphasis on particular pitches. An example is a melody that has been arranged so that the pitches G and C are consistently reiterated.

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The melodic “weight” given to those two pitches could not have been achieved by the simple transposition of motives. Further, weighted scales may also give prominence to certain pitches by using them as range limits or by placing a particular pitch at the ends of sections or the end of a piece.

Scales function somewhat differently in the art-music traditions of highly sophisticated cultures, since they are not only a means of description and analysis but are also pre-existent assumptions for the composer or performer. Within those cultures, knowledge of the characteristics and requirements of various scales is often perpetuated by written treatises on music theory as well as by oral communication from generation to generation. The existence of professional composers and performers also encourages continuity in musical knowledge, even though some cultures, like those of the Western world, advocate continuous change in musical practices within acceptable limits. Through gradual evolutionary processes, the nature of scales and their functions may change radically over a period of several centuries.

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Highly developed, complex systems governing the use of scales exist in a variety of cultures, principally in the Far East, India, Iran, the Muslim world, and the West. The differences in musical styles among those cultures are indeed great, yet there are some similarities in the manner in which scales function in each instance. Each culture has a number of basic scales (interval patterns), called grāma in India, dastgah in Iran, maqām in Muslim cultures. Generally, a basic scale is used to produce a number of different modes, or bases for melodic construction, in which the intervallic structure of the scale remains intact while primary and secondary melodic importance is attached to different pitch degrees. This hierarchy in which modes are generated by basic scale types consequently produces a greater number of modes than there are basic scales. The terms maqām and dastgah also are used to refer to such modes; the corresponding Indian term is jāti. In some art-music traditions the modes serve as the basis for an even larger number of specific melody types, which may again be elaborated further by improvisation in performance. In India the basic melodies are called rāgas; in Iran they are gūsheh. Although Western art music has a system of scales and modes, the melody types are not used as systematically or as consciously as they are in some of the non-Western traditions.