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formatting error in PT collections
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kshaffer committed Mar 25, 2016
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Expand Up @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ Folk, pop, classical, and modern composers often organize pitch materials using

When characterizing many of these new musical resources, the word “collection” is often more appropriate than "scale." A *collection* is a group of notes — usually five or more. Imagine a collection as a source from which a composer can draw musical material — a kind of “soup” within which pitch-classes float freely. Collections by themselves do not imply a tonal center. But in a composition a composer may establish a tonal center by privileging one note of the collection, which we then call a *scale*.

##Diatonic Collection (modes)
## Diatonic Collection (modes)

The *diatonic collection* is any transposition of the 7 white keys on the piano. Refer to these collections by the number of sharps and flats they contain: the “0-sharp” collection, the “1-sharp” collection, and so on. The “2-flat” collection, for example, contains the pitch classes {F, G, A, B-flat, C, D, E-flat}.

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ Locrian mode (uncommon outside jazz): *do ra me fa se le te do*

Like the major and minor scales, these intervallic relationships can be transposed to any tonic pitch.

##Pentatonic Collection
## Pentatonic Collection

*Pentatonic collections* are five-note *subsets* of the diatonic collection. Here’s a quick way to create a pentatonic collection: (1) List the notes of a major scale. (2) Remove scale degress 4 and 7. (E.g., the pentatonic collection {C,D,E,G,A} corresponds to scale degrees 1,2,3,5,6 of the C major scale.)

Expand All @@ -58,15 +58,15 @@ The black keys on the piano also form a pentatonic collection:
<img src="Graphics/postTonal/pentatonicBlack.png" alt="Black-key pentatonic scale on the treble staff." style="width:50%; margin:auto;" />


##Whole Tone Collection
## Whole Tone Collection

This is a group of notes generated entirely by whole tones: {0,2,4,6,8,10}, for example.

<img src="Graphics/postTonal/wholeTone.png" alt="C whole-tone scale on the treble staff." style="width:60%; margin:auto;" />

There are only two unique *whole-tone* collections. WT0 contains pitch classes {0,2,4,6,8,10}, while WT1 contains pitch classes {1,3,5,7,9,11}. In other words, WT0 contains the pitch classes {C, D, E, F-sharp, G-sharp, B-flat}, while WT1 contains pitch classes {C-sharp, D-sharp, F, G, A, B}.

##Octatonic Collection
## Octatonic Collection

Called octatonic because it has eight pitch classes, the *octatonic collection* is full of compositional potential and has been used by many composers to a variety of ends. An octatonic collection is easily generated by alternating half steps and whole steps. Using pitch class numbers, one example is {0,1,3,4,6,7,9,10}.

Expand All @@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ The interval content of this collection is very homogenous, and this intervallic

Olivier Messiaen called such collections “modes of limited transposition." (The whole-tone scale is also a mode of limited transposition.) And as a result of the property, there are only three unique octatonic collections. We name these arbitrarily as OCT(0,1), OCT(1,2), and OCT(2,3). The numbers to the right of “OCT” are pitch classes within that scale. (E.g., the {0,1,3,4,6,7,9,10} collection I discussed above is OCT(1,2).) We can also call them C–C&#9839; octatonic, C&#9839;–D octatonic, and D–E&#9837; octatonic.

##Other Collections and Scales
## Other Collections and Scales

There are many, many other collections and scales used by composers and musicians in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Messiaen, for example, described five more [modes of limited transposition](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_limited_transposition), and there are other smaller collections that have the same property. [Acoustic scales](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_scale), formed from the first seven unique partials of the overtone series, are common in the music of Debussy, Bartok, and Crumb — ocassionally as a representation of nature. Jazz musicians have an entire set of scales used for improvisation. Non-Western musics often have unique systems of scales and collections, such as the rāgas used in Indian classical music.

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