music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

, a monad is a single

note Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to: Music and entertainment * Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music * ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian * ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened version ...

or pitch.Castine, Peter (1994). ''Set Theory Objects: Abstractions for Computer-Aided Analysis and Composition of Serial and Atonal Music'', p.33. . The Western

chromatic scale The chromatic scale (or twelve-tone scale) is a set of twelve pitches (more completely, pitch classes) used in tonal music, with notes separated by the interval of a semitone. Chromatic instruments, such as the piano, are made to produce th ...

, for example, is composed of twelve monads. Monads are contrasted to dyads, groups of two notes, triads, groups of three, and so on.

References

Intervals (music) Simultaneities (music) {{Music-theory-stub