mode
Mode ( la, modus meaning "manner, tune, measure, due measure, rhythm, melody") may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* '' MO''D''E (magazine)'', a defunct U.S. women's fashion magazine
* ''Mode'' magazine, a fictional fashion magazine which is ...
with four
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 ...
heptatonic
A heptatonic scale is a musical scale that has seven pitches, or tones, per octave. Examples include the major scale or minor scale; e.g., in C major: C D E F G A B C—and in the relative minor, A minor, natural minor: A B C D E F G A; the m ...
(seven-note) scale such as the
major scale
The major scale (or Ionian mode) is one of the most commonly used musical scales, especially in Western music. It is one of the diatonic scales. Like many musical scales, it is made up of seven notes: the eighth duplicates the first at double ...
and
minor scale
In music theory, the minor scale is three scale patterns – the natural minor scale (or Aeolian mode), the harmonic minor scale, and the melodic minor scale (ascending or descending) – rather than just two as with the major scale, which ...
, or a dodecatonic (chromatic 12-note) scale, both common in modern Western music. Tetratonic scales are not common in modern
art music
Art music (alternatively called classical music, cultivated music, serious music, and canonic music) is music considered to be of high phonoaesthetic value. It typically implies advanced structural and theoretical considerationsJacques Siron, ...
, and are generally associated with
prehistoric music
Prehistoric music (previously called primitive music) is a term in the history of music for all music produced in preliterate cultures (prehistory), beginning somewhere in very late geological history. Prehistoric music is followed by ancient mu ...
. (Reprinted, New York: Courier Dover Publications, 1991, ).
Distribution
Native American music
Tetratonic scales were common among the Plains Indians, though less common than the
pentatonic scale
A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic scale, which has seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale).
Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many an ...
. Amongst the Arapaho, Blackfoot, Crow, Omaha, Kiowa, Pawnee, and Sioux, as well as some
Plateau tribes
Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau, also referred to by the phrase Indigenous peoples of the Plateau, and historically called the Plateau Indians (though comprising many groups) are indigenous peoples of the Interior of British Columbia ...
, especially the Flathead, the tetratonic and pentatonic scales used are anhemitonic (that is, they do not include semitones).Bruno Nettl, Victoria Lindsay Levine, and Elaine Keillor (2001), "Amerindian Music", ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers, §2(ii). Tetratonic scales have also been noted among the music of the
Creek Indians
The Muscogee, also known as the Mvskoke, Muscogee Creek, and the Muscogee Creek Confederacy ( in the Muscogee language), are a group of related indigenous (Native American) peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands and in the Great Basin region among the Washo, Ute, Paiute, and Shoshone.Bruno Nettl, Victoria Lindsay Levine, and Elaine Keillor (2001), "Amerindian Music", ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers, §2(v). In the
Southwest
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...
, the Navajo people also largely used the pentatonic and tetratonic, occasionally also tritonic scales.. Citation on 305.
Inuit
Tetratonic music was known among the Inuit, including the Greenlandic peoples.
Maori
A 1969 study by ethnomusicologist
Mervyn McLean
Mervyn is a masculine given name and occasionally a surname which is of Old Welsh origin, with elements ''mer'', probably meaning "marrow", and ''myn'', meaning "eminent".
Despite the misconception of the letter 'V' being an English spelling, thr ...
noted that tetratonic scales were the second-most common type among the Maori tribes surveyed, accounting for 31% of scales used. The most common were tritonic (3-note) scales at 47%, while the third-most was ditonic (two-note) scales at 17%.
Oceania
Tetratonic music was noted as common in Polynesia and
Melanesia
Melanesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from Indonesia's New Guinea in the west to Fiji in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea.
The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Va ...
. Citation on p. 146. On Guadalcanal in particular, anhemitonic pentatonic and tetratonic scales are the predominant types, although the minor second does nevertheless occasionally appear as a melodic interval. The most often used melodic intervals, however, are the major second, minor third, perfect fourth, perfect fifth, and octave. Citation on p. 491.
Africa
The main instrument in the Lobi area of
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
is the xylophone, some of which are tuned to a tetratonic scale.J. H. Kwabena Nketia (2001) "Ghana, Republic of ormerly Gold Coast, ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers. In eastern Uganda, the Gwere use for their six-string harp (called ''tongoli'') a tetratonic scale in which all the intervals are nearly equal, which to Western ears sounds like a chain of
minor third
In music theory, a minor third is a musical interval that encompasses three half steps, or semitones. Staff notation represents the minor third as encompassing three staff positions (see: interval number). The minor third is one of two com ...
s.Sue Carole DeVale (2001) "Harp, §III: Africa", ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, London: Macmillan Publishers.
In
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
5 equal temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system, which approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into equal steps. This means the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same, wh ...
Orissa
Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of S ...
state.
Russia
The music of the Volga-Finnic Cheremis (
Mari people
The Mari ( chm, мари; russian: марийцы, mariytsy) are a Finnic people, who have traditionally lived along the Volga and Kama rivers in Russia. Almost half of Maris today live in the Mari El republic, with significant populations in ...
) of central Russia was primarily pentatonic, but used tetratonic scales 20% of the time.
Western Europe
The second-earliest scales of Scandinavian, German, English, and Scottish folk music are believed to have been pentatonic, themselves developed from an earlier tetratonic scale. Tetratonic scales, along with pentatonic scales, account for 54% of songs in the traditional ''
joik
A joik or yoik (anglicised, where the latter spelling in English conforms with the pronunciation; also named , , , or in the Sámi languages) is a traditional form of song in Sámi music performed by the Sámi people of Sapmi in Northern Europ ...
'' repertoire of the European Arctic Sami people, where the singing range extends to a tenth or eleventh. Citation on p. 52.
The predominant style of traditional music from the Peloponnese region of Greece is a mixture of Christian, Albanian, and
Vlach
"Vlach" ( or ), also "Wallachian" (and many other variants), is a historical term and exonym used from the Middle Ages until the Modern Era to designate mainly Romanians but also Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, Istro-Romanians and other Easter ...
. It employs tetratonic, pentachordal, and pentatonic scales, around the notes of which
microtonal
Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones— intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of t ...
ornamentation
An ornament is something used for decoration.
Ornament may also refer to:
Decoration
*Ornament (art), any purely decorative element in architecture and the decorative arts
*Biological ornament, a characteristic of animals that appear to serve on ...
(''stolidia''/''psevtikes'') occurs.Sotirios Chianis and Rudolph M. Brandl (2001) "Greece, §IV: Traditional Music", ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, London: Macmillan Publishers.
Art music
A rare example of an art-music composition based entirely on a tetratonic scale is the early minimalist work '' Reed Phase'' (1966), by Steve Reich, which is based entirely on a single five-note cell, or "basic unit", repeated continually throughout the entire work. Because the note A occurs twice in this pattern, there are only four pitches in all.
References
Further reading
* Bartha, Dénes. 1963. "Le développement de la résonance dans les musiques évoluées: Occident au XXe siècle—La musique de Bartók". In ''La résonance dans les échelles musicales'', edited by Édith Weber, 279–90. Colloques Internationaux du CNRS 516. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
* Griffiths, Paul. 2001. "Dusapin, Pascal". ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
* Ho, Allan B. 2001. " Lee, Dai-Keong". ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
*
* Ramón y Rivera, Luis Felipe. 1969. "Formaciones Escalísticas en la Etnomúsica Latinoamericana". ''Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council'' 1:200–25.
* Roberts, Shawn M. 2010. "Aztec Musical Styles in Carlos Chávez's ''Xochipilli: An Imagined Aztec Music'' and Lou Harrison's ''The Song of Quetzalcóatl'': A Parallel and Comparative Study". DMA thesis. Morgantown: West Virginia University.
* Ulveling, Paul. 2001. "Cigrang, Edmond". ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
{{Scales
Musical scales