21st April 2020, 1:58 AM
My own take on Miniature Fantasy. Hopefully this little detailed analysis will help a few people comprehend WHY THE HELL this is in C Half# Dorian. Sorry if there are any mistakes in there, it's 2 AM and I just got back from a rough shift, but here we goooooo
First off, let's start with something simple: figuring out where we stand at with our first couple notes and their frequencies, as bls1999 already did:
Frequencies of the first notes (let's call them G, B flat and A for now)
G: ~403 Hz
B flat: ~480 Hz
A: ~452 Hz
Now, assuming we are using standard A440 tuning, let's look where those notes are situated:
![[Image: MyuiBn8.png]](https://i.imgur.com/MyuiBn8.png)
That's right, we're getting into the great world of quarter tones ! (we could go a lot deeper and use microtonal theory, but let's not delve down this pit for now). Our notes, in order, are G half#, B half-flat and A half#.
Now let's examine the scale used and its armature. Ignore the dorian annotations for now.
![[Image: NMyPz9d.png]](https://i.imgur.com/NMyPz9d.png)
The first 2 rows are the scales of B flat Major and B major, with their respective key signatures (B-E flat, F-D-G-D-A sharp). I've added an extra C at the end of the B major scale for comparison, but there is half a step, or a semitone if you prefer, that separates each note between those 2 scales.
The last 2 rows represent the first melody/riff of Miniature Fantasy in each of those keys. As we figured already with our pitch analysis, the actual song ends up between them.
But why is the song not in B Half-flat Major, then ? To answer this question, we need to take a look at the chords used in the song. Doing so in details, such as cadences, progressions, etc. would be very long and tedious, but simply looking at the bass lines, a lot of it is built upon C Half# roots (G/C, F/C resolving into an E/C, all half#).
If you are unfamiliar with modern musical modes, Dangevin came up with a great explanation of what they are. I'd recommend reading it first, and I'll try to complement it a tad here.
Since we know the song is in B Half-flat Major, and that it's chord progression (being very lenient with terminology here for the sake of simplicity) stands on C Half# roots within that scale, we can take the dorian mode (also called the 2nd mode, or D mode) of our key, and make it our new key. It is technically still B Hal-flat Major, but this ''new scale'' makes more sense for the overall song and its composition.
A usual major scale is formed like this: T-S-S-H-S-S-S-H(T), where T stands for TONIC (our root), S stands for STEP, and H for HALF-STEP. I will use B flat here for this example, but it's the same idea for B Half-flat Major vs C Half# Dorian.
B flat Major = Bb-C-D-Eb-F-G-A-Bb
Dorian means we now start on the 2nd degree of our major scale: T-S-H-S-S-S-H-S(T), so we simply take our C root, and use this sequence to build this scale. Notice how the alterations are still the same as B flat Major; this is why it's called a mode.
C Dorian = C-D-Eb-F-G-A-Bb-C
Take this last scale we made, add a quartertone (half#) to each of these notes, and voilà !
This is why Miniature Fantasy is in the key of C Half# Dorian.
Hope this makes more sense to some of you !
First off, let's start with something simple: figuring out where we stand at with our first couple notes and their frequencies, as bls1999 already did:
Frequencies of the first notes (let's call them G, B flat and A for now)
G: ~403 Hz
B flat: ~480 Hz
A: ~452 Hz
Now, assuming we are using standard A440 tuning, let's look where those notes are situated:
That's right, we're getting into the great world of quarter tones ! (we could go a lot deeper and use microtonal theory, but let's not delve down this pit for now). Our notes, in order, are G half#, B half-flat and A half#.
Now let's examine the scale used and its armature. Ignore the dorian annotations for now.
The first 2 rows are the scales of B flat Major and B major, with their respective key signatures (B-E flat, F-D-G-D-A sharp). I've added an extra C at the end of the B major scale for comparison, but there is half a step, or a semitone if you prefer, that separates each note between those 2 scales.
The last 2 rows represent the first melody/riff of Miniature Fantasy in each of those keys. As we figured already with our pitch analysis, the actual song ends up between them.
But why is the song not in B Half-flat Major, then ? To answer this question, we need to take a look at the chords used in the song. Doing so in details, such as cadences, progressions, etc. would be very long and tedious, but simply looking at the bass lines, a lot of it is built upon C Half# roots (G/C, F/C resolving into an E/C, all half#).
If you are unfamiliar with modern musical modes, Dangevin came up with a great explanation of what they are. I'd recommend reading it first, and I'll try to complement it a tad here.
Since we know the song is in B Half-flat Major, and that it's chord progression (being very lenient with terminology here for the sake of simplicity) stands on C Half# roots within that scale, we can take the dorian mode (also called the 2nd mode, or D mode) of our key, and make it our new key. It is technically still B Hal-flat Major, but this ''new scale'' makes more sense for the overall song and its composition.
A usual major scale is formed like this: T-S-S-H-S-S-S-H(T), where T stands for TONIC (our root), S stands for STEP, and H for HALF-STEP. I will use B flat here for this example, but it's the same idea for B Half-flat Major vs C Half# Dorian.
B flat Major = Bb-C-D-Eb-F-G-A-Bb
Dorian means we now start on the 2nd degree of our major scale: T-S-H-S-S-S-H-S(T), so we simply take our C root, and use this sequence to build this scale. Notice how the alterations are still the same as B flat Major; this is why it's called a mode.
C Dorian = C-D-Eb-F-G-A-Bb-C
Take this last scale we made, add a quartertone (half#) to each of these notes, and voilà !
This is why Miniature Fantasy is in the key of C Half# Dorian.
Hope this makes more sense to some of you !
If you're reading this, it means I have not made a cool signature yet and you should be proud of yourself.
