# Detect a tonality



## Alexanbar

https://musescore.com/user/102760/scores/3771421


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## EdwardBast

What, you don't hear a perfectly clear cadence on E-flat at the end?


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## Alexanbar

The score contains some notes not included to E flat minor.

i.e. it is a not natural minor or major.


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## Vasks

It's in E-flat and primarily E-flat major. It doesn't matter if there's a slight mix of modes. Frankly, the G-flats are on weak beats and are more like passing tones. The A naturals used at the end even throw in a touch of another mode: Lydian; but that mode is more related to major than minor.


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## Woodduck

If we have to assign a key to it, it could as well be in Ab as in Eb, despite ending on an Eb. All those passing notes say nothing about its tonality. But why do we have to assign a key to it? Plenty of music is ambiguous in terms of our tonal system.


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## EdwardBast

Alexanbar said:


> The score contains some notes not included to E flat minor.
> 
> i.e. it is a not natural minor or major.


Tonality and key aren't synonyms for me, the former requiring nothing more than identifying the central pitch. If you want a key I can only say it sounds more like E-flat minor to me than major, (Vasks: I would say the G-natural is the passing tone, not the G-flat.), and (Woodduck) to me the E-flat sounds like tonic in the first and second phrases as well as the last.


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## Alexanbar

Woodduck said:


> If we have to assign a key to it, it could as well be in Ab as in Eb, despite ending on an Eb. All those passing notes say nothing about its tonality. But why do we have to assign a key to it? Plenty of music is ambiguous in terms of our tonal system.


If I know the key, I can add instruments whose sounds would be collected to chords.

I think that this melody is close to the asian or arabian traditions, but I know little about this frets.


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## tortkis

EdwardBast said:


> Tonality and key aren't synonyms for me, the former requiring nothing more than identifying the central pitch. If you want a key I can only say it sounds more like E-flat minor to me than major, (Vasks: I would say the G-natural is the passing tone, not the G-flat.), and (Woodduck) to me the E-flat sounds like tonic in the first and second phrases as well as the last.


I agree. It sounds E-flat minor to me and those other notes look just some passing notes or ornament notes.



Alexanbar said:


> I think that this melody is close to the asian or arabian traditions, but I know little about this frets.


Probably the chromatic ornament notes gave you that impression?


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## Vasks

Actually I "hear" A-flat major with the final cadence being a Half. My initial "visual" analysis was based on the final cadence being viio-I. Oh well.


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## EdwardBast

Alexanbar said:


> If I know the key, I can add instruments whose sounds would be collected to chords.
> 
> I think that this melody is close to the asian or arabian traditions, but I know little about this frets.


Alexanbar, can you give us a translation of the text? Just curious and it will save me from having to dig out my Russian-English dictionary.


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## Alexanbar

EdwardBast said:


> Alexanbar, can you give us a translation of the text? Just curious and it will save me from having to dig out my Russian-English dictionary.


Yes. 
This text based on the anecdote.
A foreigner came to a cinema, and a woman who knitting socks sat next to him ..
When a tangle with threads ended, she used a thread from her neighbor's pants

And then he wrote a letter to his wife:

"Oh, Marie, Marie, Marie! It is very difficult to live in the USSR!
When I watche the movie "Baghdad thief", a Russian thief stole my pants."


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## EdwardBast

Vasks might be right that Ab makes more sense. Nevertheless, I couldn't resist harmonizing it in Eb minor just for fun:


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## Alexanbar

Thanks. Your version is similar to Russian folk music.

But the answer to the question of the topic does not seem convincing to me.

I decided to add a fragment in Ab major at the end (it's not a final release ) ...

https://musescore.com/user/102760/scores/3771421

Is there an expert in Asian music among us?


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## Vasks

Your new section is in A-flat minor, so why not use the key signature of that rather than the key signature of A-flat major. In fact why not have the first 4 bars with the key signature of A-flat major and use the few accidentals necessary.


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## Alexanbar

Vasks said:


> Your new section is in A-flat minor


May be you are right. Only one note is not in Ab minor (D natural)



Vasks said:


> In fact why not have the first 4 bars with the key signature of A-flat major and use the few accidentals necessary.


i.e. can't detect a tonality according to music theory?


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## Vasks

Alexanbar said:


> May be you are right. Only one note is not in Ab minor (D natural)
> 
> i.e. can't detect a tonality according to music theory?


Oh it's quite detectable. Within a day or two I'll post here a simplistic harmonization mp3 so you can hear for yourself. But meanwhile, if you did use the A-flat major key sig for the first 4 bars, I'd make the E natural, an enharmonic F-flat and that would set up nicely the suggestion that A-flat minor is around the corner.


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## millionrainbows

It is obviously in A-flat, especially at the end. All the ambiguity you are questioning is simply tension. This is what tonality does, it keeps you guessing until it delivers the sucker-punch.

This is a very good lesson, actually. It tells us that "tonality" does not always "define" a specific tonality all the time, in a literal way.

That's why the term "atonal" works well in defining what is NOT tonal, without the unfair burden of having to define specifics: it's a general term. 

If something is atonal, it is not tonal, and that does not define specifically what kind of tonality it is not; only that it is NOT tonal.

Tonality, therefore, is a general term, and is not always specific, because tonality itself is often unspecific and ambiguous.


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## Alexanbar

I thought that if something is atonal that it is terrible and it contains something shapeless.
But I see that this melody submits of something rules but i don't know what are the rules.


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## millionrainbows

Alexanbar said:


> I thought that if something is atonal that it is terrible and it contains something shapeless.
> But I see that this melody submits of something rules but i don't know what are the rules.


No, don't think that, or you'll be playing right into Mahlerian's grasp.

"Atonal" has no negative implications except in Russia, where "human rights" also is a negative term.


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## Alexanbar

millionrainbows said:


> "Atonal" has no negative implications except in Russia.


Yes, it is because no conditions for development of many things - not only for music


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## Vasks

I've been thinking about all that you've said early on in this thread, Alexanbar, and it got me wondering if you know anything about "Chromatic chords" (Secondary dominants, secondary leading tones, borrowed chords, Neapolitan sixth, Augmented sixths, etc). If not, that would explain why you're having a hard time considering the first 4 bars being in a key.


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## Alexanbar

I' ve got only primary musical edication. And I don't know many things


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## EdwardBast

My ending is ambiguous between Ab major and Ab minor. It does feel like harmonizing Russian folk song and it was a fun exercise.









And just in case you want to be reasonable, here it is transposed up to A minor:


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## Vasks

EdwardBast said:


> And just in case you want to be reasonable, here it is transposed up to A minor:


WTF? Russians love lots of flats. A minor = Russoblasphemy LOL!!


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## EdwardBast

Fixed a couple of things. Final version in A minor:

Vasks: I don't suppose G minor would be enough flats either?


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## Alexanbar

EdwardBast said:


> Fixed a couple of things. Final version in A minor:
> 
> Vasks: I don't suppose G minor would be enough flats either?
> 
> View attachment 93792


Are you use a music notation software? If yes. could you give me a .mxl (MusicXML) file? I read a notation not quitly fast as it required.

I analize the melody and found out that it contains the following construction - 5 half-tones in sequence.

Natural minor and natural major are not contains this sequence - this is a source of difficulties.

I remembered one of the old popular russian songs where this sequence is present:




(Named "Find me a moonstone")


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## Vasks

Here's a mp3 of your melody harmonized. I kept a harmonic rhythm of one chord for each beat (except 2 beats for cadences of mss. 3 & 4). I tried to use basic triadic chords with just a few 7ths added. And while I can't say that my harmonization is the best, I chose the chords I used to let you hear that your melody fits easily to the keys of A-flat major and then A-flat minor with merely using almost exclusively "diatonic" (i.e. no "chromatic") chords.

View attachment Ax.mp3


If you want to "see" the progression used just ask.


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## EdwardBast

Yes, I am using Sibelius notation software.

I tried to upload and attach an mp3 file but I don't think it worked (less than one meg of data doesn't seem right). Oh wait, I think it did work.

View attachment Alexanbar.mp3


Anyway, when setting a melody I tend to think primarily in counterpoint, not harmony. The principle is: Write a good bass line or counter melody and the "harmony" takes care of itself; not everything is meant to be harmonized. Working that way, it isn't even necessary to think about key, as long as the cadence points in the melody sound like they reach the goal.


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## Larkenfield

The key signature of six flats and the minor G flat in the melody line from the first E flat tonic note of the melody could not be more clear that this is written in the key of E flat minor and has that predominant tonality. If it had been written in any other key or suggested another key, such as Ab flat, the key signature would have been written in four flats and the melody in a major key, and there is not even an A flat in the melody line to suggest that it's in any other key other than E flat minor. Since this is such a short excerpt, there obviously is more to come in this entire piece to suggest the tonality and key of E flat minor, or it would have surely been written in a different key signature that dominates the whole.


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