Talk:Octatonic scale

message: It is vital that this article point out immediately that the term octatonic scale is very often used to refer to the diminished scale specifically. TheScotch (talk) 01:36, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The move is fine with me, but shouldn't there be something at diminished scale, at least a redirect here? --Delirium (talk) 02:46, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Oh, I see. I clicked on this comment and assumed it belonged to the old "Octatonic scale" article. Hyacinth has apparently effectively wiped out the old "Octatonic scale" article and changed the name of the old "Diminished scale" article without having discussed it first (a fortiori achieving consensus), and in the process he's also wiped out the "Diminished scale" article's discussion page. Yes, at the very least there should a redirect. I'm going to begin by attempting to restore the discussion page, however.TheScotch (talk) 08:59, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Diminished scale

message: My remark below concerning the term octotonic, in contradistinction to octatonic, seems a non-sequitur because something is missing from the original discussion. I don't know where it went, and I can't seem to restore it. TheScotch (talk) 08:20, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Oct''o''tonic

message: I've just added a new section - hopefully it's of some use to people. However, I'm not sure if it's particularly clear as I lack the language and terminology to explain my knowledge on the subject properly so apologies for that.--Giggidy 00:15, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Harmonic implications 

message: The accidental figures added appear as question marks (?) from my computer. Hyacinth 16:54, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's probably because you don't have a font that includes them. Do they appear in Character Map? —Keenan Pepper 17:30, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Accidentals

message: This article concerns the symmetric octatonic scale, which is the only octatonic scale lacking 3-halftone clusters. However, many other octatonic scales can be designed. For instance, jazz bass players will sometimes insert an extra tone into a seven-tone scale so that in walking up the scale can land on the root at the start of each measure. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 35.11.210.175 (talk • contribs) .
:There are, in fact, forty-three enharmonically equivalent (and non-transpositionally equivalent) eight-note scales. (You can verify this figure easily in your head without resorting to outside sources or a calculator or paper and pencil if you simply bear in mind that four is the complement of eight in respect to twelve, that the diminished seventh chord has three positions, that the French augmented sixth chord and [0,1,6,7] have six positions each, and that all the rest have twelve: [ (9 X 5 X 11 - 15)  / 12] + 3 = 43.)
:Note that the wikipedia "pentatonic scale" article does not concern itself solely with C D E G A, the scale conventionally known as the pentatonic scale, but discusses various other five-note scales as well--and in considerably more depth than this article at present discusses other eight-note scales. TheScotch 11:29, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems to me clear from the way the opening section currently reads that the article was originally titled “Diminished scale”, and I think that’s what it should still be titled. Once we’ve returned to this original title we can write a separate “octatonic scale” article that can talk about various eight-note scales. Both articles will of course acknowledge that classical theory (in contradistinction to jazz theory) tends to refer to the diminished scale as the octatonic scale. TheScotch 09:45, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

text: We've already acknowledged that the most famous octatonic scale is the diminished scale (just as, as pointed out above, the most famous pentatonic scale is the anhemitonic pentatonic scale)--no one disputes this--, but octatonic necessarily means eight-note (just as pentatonic necessarily means five-note), and there's no getting around that. The term diminished scale is at least as widely known as the term octatonic scale, and it has the decided advantage of being unambiguous. You should note as well that the article as it stood before you altered it made a particular point of acknowledging and explaining the alternative term octatonic scale: it wasn't taking sides. Right now there is not a separate "octatonic scale" article; "octatonic scale" redirects to here. If one is made, it will need to talk about the particular octatonic scale (also) known as the diminished scale immediately and furnish a link to this article. TheScotch 02:09, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are a number of comments on this page by people who admit to never having even encountered the term 'diminished scale' prior to this article. 'Octatonic' just means 'eight-note' if you want to be pedantic, yes, but the only eight-note scale that most reasonably musically educated people would likely have heard of (or even be interested in) is the scale of alternating tones and semitones. I believe that the name 'octatonic' should be reserved for this scale alone, simply because of its pre-eminence - it was the first eight-note scale used widely by composers, and is still the most frequently encountered. Furthermore, the reason for its pre-eminence, and the only reason composers are really interested in it, is because of its characteristic colour - reducing it to a mere subset of the set of all eight-note scales is surely to miss this vital point. Christopher Melen 05:46, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment mistakenly added to article 

message: *In popular music, an example of the use of the octatonic scale appears in the Radiohead song "Just".
Hyacinth (talk) 18:29, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Citation needed

message: "The twelve tones of the chromatic scale are covered by three disjoint diminished seventh chords. The notes from exactly two such seventh-chords combination [sic] form an octatonic collection. Because there are exactly three ways to select two from three, there are exactly three octatonic scales in the 12-tone system." That's inaccurate. There might be exactly three sets with that description, but a scale is not a set. The scale concept includes a tonic (or root for chord scales). There are 12 possible tonics (ignoring enharmonic spellings). Therefore, there are always 12 possible scales of any given shape. It doesn't matter if any of the scales use identical pitches. The tonics or roots make them different. C diminished 7 is not the same as A diminished 7, and neither are the related scales the same. That's why they have different names! Since there are two possible eight-member symmetrical diminished scale shapes, that makes exactly 24 scales, not three. 76.94.246.25 (talk) 19:50, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusion of scale with set 

message: In the "Properties section of the article I find this:
For example:
    * semitone: (C, C?), (D?, E) (F?, G), (A, B?)
    * whole step: (C?, D?), (E, F?), (G, A), (B?, C)
    * minor third:(C, E?), (F?, A), (C?, E), (G, B?)
    * major third:(C, E), (F?, B?), (E?, G), (A, C?)
    * perfect fourth: (C?, F?), (B?, E?), (G, C), (E, A)
    * tritone: (C, F?), (E?, A), (C?, G), (E, B?)''
But nowhere in the article do I find an explanation of what all these question marks are supposed to mean.  Nor am I familiar with the use of the question mark in this context from music theory.
This occurs in several other parts of the article, also without explanation.  If this is some recent notational development it needs to be explained, preferrably early in the article.  Or perhaps it would be a better idea to use a more widely familiar conventional notation to express whatever is being attempted here, if that is possible.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.206.185.142 (talk) 05:08, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It means that your font doesn't contain the correct accidental characters ( sharp;  flat). Double sharp (talk) 14:20, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  ??? Properties ??? 

message: Concerning this statement in the article
Liszt was to become an idol of the Russian school, and starting with Glinka's opera Ruslan and Lyudmila (first performed 1842) the diminished scale was often used by Russian composers to evoke scenes of magic and exotic mystery
For all I know, all examples of 'symmetrical scales' in Ruslan have nothing to do with both 'octatonic' (Chernomor's music is rather 'hexatonic') and Liszt. I would appreciate a citation from a scholarly work which asserts that wholetone-scales by Glinka in Ruslan is a trubute to the 'idol' Liszt. Olorulus (talk) 08:34, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Glinka's Ruslan as a tribute to his 'idol' Liszt 

message: I've just added a reference to the Liszt Bagatelle ohne Tonart. (Funny that nobody else had done so before me but never mind).  However i am not suff familiar with this dialect of HTML to know how to insert the relevant bars of music.  tf@dpmms.cam.ac.uk
:Your point is well taken. The Liszt example is often cited in connection with the evolution of the octatonic scale, and a verifying citation should be easily found. I do not understand what HTML has to do with inserting bars of music (bar numbers?), unless you mean a musical example, which cannot be done with HTML as far as I am aware. On Wikipedia, the usual method for that is LilyPond.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:55, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Liszt