In music a fourth is an
interval spanning four
staff positions in the
musical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of written, printed, or otherwise-produced symbols, including notation fo ...
common in
Western culture
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image:Plato Pio-Cle ...
.
Specific fourth intervals include:
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Perfect fourth
A fourth is a musical interval encompassing four staff positions in the music notation of Western culture, and a perfect fourth () is the fourth spanning five semitones (half steps, or half tones). For example, the ascending interval from C to ...
, the fourth spanning five semitones
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Diminished fourth
In classical music from Western culture, a diminished fourth () is an interval produced by narrowing a perfect fourth by a chromatic semitone.Benward & Saker (2003). ''Music: In Theory and Practice, Vol. I'', p.54. . Specific example of an d4 ...
, a perfect fourth narrowed by a chromatic semitone, thus spanning four semitones
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Augmented fourth or tritone, an interval of three adjacent whole tones (six semitones)
In addition, fourth in music may refer to:
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Quartal harmony
In music, quartal harmony is the building of harmonic structures built from the intervals of the perfect fourth, the augmented fourth and the diminished fourth. For instance, a three-note quartal chord on C can be built by stacking perfect fourt ...
, harmonic structures built from the perfect fourth, the augmented fourth and the diminished fourth
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Subdominant
In music, the subdominant is the fourth tonal degree () of the diatonic scale. It is so called because it is the same distance ''below'' the tonic as the dominant is ''above'' the tonicin other words, the tonic is the dominant of the subdomina ...
, the fourth tonal
degree
Degree may refer to:
As a unit of measurement
* Degree (angle), a unit of angle measurement
** Degree of geographical latitude
** Degree of geographical longitude
* Degree symbol (°), a notation used in science, engineering, and mathematics
...
of the
diatonic scale
In music theory, a diatonic scale is any heptatonic scale that includes five whole steps (whole tones) and two half steps (semitones) in each octave, in which the two half steps are separated from each other by either two or three whole steps, ...
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