The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #153690 Message #3601426
Posted By: Richard Mellish
14-Feb-14 - 09:51 AM
Thread Name: Grappling with basic chord theory
Subject: RE: Grappling with basic chord theory
Mysha said
"Now, there would be one additional tone that would be nice to play, but most of our instruments can't play it. Bother. The problem is, starting from E again, you'd have to count three and a half fret. That doesn't work, so we play it either by counting 4 frets, or by counting 3 frets."
I understand that this is a way of getting towards describing major and minor thirds, and perhaps also a hint about blue notes. HOWEVER there is a reason why most instruments allow major and minor thirds but many can't play something in between at all or can do so only by bending the note. A perfect (i.e. not equal-tempered) major third has a frequency ratio of 5:4 and a perfect minor third has a ratio of 6:5, both of which sound OK. Somewhere in between sounds rough.
Richard